


Concentric Circles

by glowspider



Series: The Uzumaki Conundrum [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Growing Up, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-10 22:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16463432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowspider/pseuds/glowspider
Summary: “An omen,” the nurse says, glancing at the heavy rain pelting the glass window above the hospital bed. “Her life will be a whirlwind, her very presence the eye of the storm.”Uzumaki women are born resilient. Kushina is no exception.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I would definitely recommend reading Strangers at the Gates before reading this, since this serves as a sort of prequel for it.  
> This story also has a darker tone.

She is born to mild-mannered couple Fumi and Hideo, branch members of the Uzumaki Clan of Uzushio. Upon her head is a tuft of scarlet hair, the same as everyone else in the clan. When she first comes out, she screams with her first breath, until her face goes the same shade as her hair. Her parents look on in concern, afraid she will not stop to breathe, but eventually biology intervenes, and little Kushina takes a desperate inhale. Once her face has returned to its normal color, she lets out another mighty wail.

She is born in the midst of Uzushio’s monsoon season. One of the nurses smiles at Kushina’s tired and befuddled parents as she hands them their screaming, swaddled baby. 

“An omen,” she says, glancing at the heavy rain pelting the glass window above the hospital bed. “Her life will be a whirlwind, her very presence the eye of the storm.”

If only they knew how accurate the prediction would be.

 

\----

 

When Kushina is seven, her mother gently breaks the news to her that she’ll be spending July through October in some far away village, with a distant relative.

Kushina does not yet know the name “Uzumaki Mito” or the history of the Hidden Leaf Village Konoha. She doesn’t know that she has been picked to be the next Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon, a great honor to her parents and a greater burden for herself.

Fat tears gather in her big gray eyes when her mother breaks the news of these travel plans.

“You’ll miss monsoon season,” her mother says comfortingly as she brushes out Kushina’s long hair. “You’ll get to spend time with your great aunt. You’ll make so many new friends in Konoha.”

But Kushina doesn’t care about meeting family or friends. She wants to stay here in Uzushio, where she can play outside in the pounding rain, and celebrate her eighth birthday with people who aren’t strangers. 

Four months away from home is a lifetime for a child who’s seen so little of the world.

 

\----

 

Before they sent her packing to Konoha, the elders coached her on how to act around Mito-sama. 

Kushina may not know much about her family’s history and their relationship with Konoha, but even she can tell that Uzumaki Mito is respected in the Shinobi world.

For one thing, the woman lives in a giant house, bigger than anything Kushina has ever seen before on the winding cobblestone streets of Uzushio. Here in Konoha, there seems to be ample space. Mito’s house is a manifestation of this, located on a distant hill above the downtown area of the city. There are no fences or gates surrounding the mansion, and Kushina can hear the distant sounds of a creek from around the back of the building. She wonders if the forest that borders the mansion is privately owned, or if children can play in it as they please.

Kushina imagines Mito-sama to be a crone of a witch like in old fairy tales, respected by the people of Konoha because she’ll eat their young and raze the town down if they don’t.

Even as a child, Kushina understands the relationship between respect, power, and fear. 

Her impassive Jounin walks her up to the iron gridded front door, where an attendant pokes their head out. 

Kushina is rushed inside and up a flight of winding stairs before she can say a word. After a long walk down a dark hall, they come to a another set of doors. She is pushed into a study, the entire room backlit by a window that overlooks the backyard forest.

An ancient woman sits at a cozy chair angled towards the window, hair the same shade as Kushina’s own.

She has never seen someone with such presence, and even her underdeveloped senses can feel the sheer amount of humming chakra in this room. Kushina’s skin crawls, because it isn’t cool and reassuring like her own parents’ chakra, but blisteringly hot and unnatural. 

Mito-sama must surely be a witch, and Kushina the child sacrifice she demands.

 _Oh God_ , Kushina thinks, _she’ll turn me into a songbird or a pile of ash with her evil powers._

Mito turns her head away from the window to Kushina.

“You must be little Kushina,” she says with a disarmingly warm smile.

Kushina nods, before remembering the Elders’ instructions.

She shakedly curtsies, her eyes angled towards the floor in deference as she speaks.

“It is an honor to meet you Mito-sama. I am Uzumaki Kushina, here to serve you in anything you may need.”

She chokes out the words, afraid she’ll mess up and insult the woman before her.

Instead, Mito-sama smiles even wider.

“None of that, child,” she says, waving her thin hand in the air. “We are family. We can ignore the formalities.”

She winks when she says this, like she and Kushina are part of an inside joke. Some of the tension eases out of Kushina’s posture.

“Now,” she adds, noticing Kushina’s awkward position in the middle of the room, “why don’t you come here and sit down. I’m sure you have lots of questions, and I would be happy to answer them.”

So Kushina crosses the room, settling herself in a big, plush armchair beside her great aunt.

 

\----

 

There is an old story, about the founding of Konoha and the other Hidden Villages. It goes like this:

A lifetime ago, when great demons walked the earth, there were pockets of people scattered across the land. Every permanent settlement the people tried to build was torn down by the giant chakra beasts, for they were evil incarnate and hated humans more than anything else in this world. As a result, these tribes, or clans, became nomadic, constantly fighting with each other for limited resources. 

One day, two young warriors from rival clans met in the dense forests of Fire Country.

Their names were Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, and they had developed a mighty plan for bring peace to the world. They wanted to unite all the warring clans, using their combined might and chakra techniques to rid the world of the tailed beasts.

But, there were two issues with this plan. Firstly, they had to get the clans to work unite—a near-impossible task after all the years of bloodshed between them. Secondly, the two men had no clue how to go about killing the immortal and powerful demons. 

They decided to divide and conquer. Madara, with the help of Hashirama’s younger brother, Tobirama, would unite all the clans of Fire Country, while Hashirama would travel near and far, looking for a way to seal away the tailed beasts.

Madara and Tobirama were immensely successful in their efforts, combining the might of the Uchiha and Senju clans to convince smaller, weaker clans to join them. They picked up the Inuzuka and the Hyuuga and the Nara, among others, which would form the clan system of the Village of Konoha one day. Never before was there an army more powerful than that of the allied tribes of Fire Country.

Meanwhile, Hashirama had traversed every inch of the mainland, looking for a way to kill a god. While he learned much about the chakra techniques and styles of each country, his search was ultimately fruitless. He had one last lead to follow before he returned to Fire Country as a failure.

There were rumors of a place far to the south and east of Fire Country, where the people practiced a new and powerful chakra form, commanded through ink and paper instead of the human body. 

Hashirama had no clue how much his life would change with this final journey.

When he finally stepped off the boat in Whirlpool Country, there was a person on the opposite shore gathering water.

As Hashirama approached the foreigner, their face grew in sharper and sharper detail, until standing before him was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, with hair the shade of a bloody sunset and sparkling gray eyes.

The stranger’s name was Uzumaki Mito, successor to the most powerful clan in Whirlpool Country. As luck would have it, she was the master of this new technique of seal-making, later known as Fuinjutsu.

She was charmed by Hashirama’s brave spirit and his noble quest, and offered to aid him in any way possible. Struck by her beauty and intelligence, Hashirama readily agreed. And so, they embarked on a quest together. They traveled across the land for weeks, visiting Mito’s fellow clansmen and researching a way to stop the tailed beasts.

One day, on the eve of their third month of traveling together, Mito had two epiphanies.

The first was that she had fallen completely and irrevocably in love with Senju Hashirama, and all his quirks. He was a mighty warrior and scholar, and despite his status as a foreigner, Mito trusted him more than even her own kin. She knew then and there that she would gladly take his hand in marriage if he asked her for it. 

The second revelation was all the more heartbreaking because of the first. You see, Mito had figured out a way to contain the demons, because killing a god was not yet possible. It involved a complex and powerful seal, but Mito was sure she and Hashirama could pull it off.

No, the problem was that the seal required a human sacrifice of sorts, a literal container for the demon, and only someone with vast Chakra reserves flowing through their body would suffice. Mito, inheritor of the renowned Uzumaki Chakra reserves, had realized she was the only suitable candidate for the Nine-Tailed Fox, the worst of the demons which had made its home in Fire Country. She knew that there was no guarantee she would survive the sealing process. And so, she despaired.

But after a day of grieving for her wasted future and newfound love, Mito told Hashirama her plan.

He disagreed, for he too was madly in love and could not stand the thought of losing Mito, until she reminded him that this was the only way to save the entire world. One life was not worth millions.

So, Hashirama made the selfless decision, and he and Mito and a few brave Uzumakis returned to Fire Country, where Madara and Tobirama and their United Tribes Army were waiting.

This is the part in the story that is usually skipped over, because as much as violence and war are glorified in the Shinobi world, some losses are too great to recount to children.

Clansmen died in droves where the Demon Fox’s claws struck the ground, smearing Fire Country’s lush forests red in fire and blood. A death toll of hundreds turned to thousands which turned to millions, until there was a mighty sensation from the heart of the forest, where Mito and Hashirama had finally completed the seal. 

The gorges and ravines that run through Fire country today are said to be gouges from the claws of the Nine Tails, from when it struggled to escape its Fuinjutsu jail cell. It was a futile fight in the end.

The might of one human’s soul was powerful enough to subdue a god.

Uzumaki Mito did not die on that day, instead becoming the world’s first Jinchuuriki.

The Senju and the Uchiha established Konohagakure at the heart of Fire Country, where so many had sacrificed their lives for peace. This marked the end of the Warring States Era, and the beginning of the Shinobi, as other nations learned to create their own Jinchuurikis. 

She and Hashirama were married soon after, a joyous affair that would foster alliances between Konoha and Uzushio for generations to come.

It was a happy ending. 

 

\----

 

“You still don’t understand why you’re here, do you?” Mito says quietly after she finishes telling her story.

Kushina shakes her head. The fear that Mito would bewitch her or eat her whole just seems like childish fantasy now. 

But what reason would Mito have for requesting the company of a lowly daughter of the branch family? Kushina isn’t the brightest kid in her class, nor the most well-behaved, or even the prettiest. 

“Child,” Mito whispers with something like pity in her eyes, “you have been chosen as the next Jinchuuriki.”

Kushina thinks of her parents, neighbors, family, all so proud when the news broke that Uzumaki Mito requested her presence in Konoha. She looks at Mito’s face, sympathetic beneath all the wrinkles and crow's feet—it doesn’t add up.

Mito pulls Kushina into a hug, and Kushina lets the old woman embrace her. She seems like she could use a hug.

Years down the line, Kushina will think back to this moment, when her life’s path was decided for her. She was not shattered by the news, or even remotely upset, merely handling it the same way she would if someone told her they were having fish for dinner that night.

It wasn’t fair. It was wrong.

But how could a child possibly understand bloodshed and war and loss? How could a child understand what it meant to sacrifice their soul to a malevolent god?

 

\----

 

Kushina’s days are spent in the dusty, winding hallways of the first Hokage’s home. Mito teaches Kushina more of their family history, of society and culture, and a thousand things Kushina won’t ever have a need for because she’s gonna be a Shinobi when she grows up, Mito-sama.

But still, Kushina learns regional dialects of Wave Country, and how to play piano, and the proper way to greet a Daimyo’s kids. But, she also learns about chakra theory and control, and how to summon her bloodline limit in the form of energy chains, and most importantly of all, she learns Uzushio’s specialty, the art of Fuinjutsu.

After about a month of lessons, Mito announces that Kushina will start attending the Ninja Academy with the other Konoha children. 

Kushina isn’t exactly thrilled at the news, but under Mito’s grandmotherly gaze, she finds herself unable to muster up any protests.

Like a decree from the Gods, Kushina will attend school this Monday.

 

\----

 

Kushina has made up her mind by the third day. Konoha’s Ninja Academy freaking sucks.

Exactly as predicted, none of the kids like her or will talk to her, besides to mock her bright red hair, and even brighter face that flushes once she gets mad or embarrassed enough. 

She’s not good at Taijutsu like everyone else, and her fighting style is drastically different than that taught at the Village of the Hidden Leaf. Not to mention, they don’t even bother to mention Fuinjutsu besides the use of basic, boring exploding tags.

She’s dismissed from class at the ring of the lunch bell, and sweeps her notebook and pencil into her bag before running out to the schoolyard. If Kushina goes fast enough, she can snag the table underneath the shady tree on the corner of the blacktop, where no kids will come up and bother her. 

She busts out the doors, eyes already transfixed on her lunch spot.

Except there’s someone there.

As she gets nearer, she starts to recognize the kid—it’s that quiet, smartass boy who sits in the front row of her class. He’s shy and weird, and more than once she’s caught his narrow blue eyes on her.

Kushina’s face heats up, already suspicious and defensive of whatever this kid is planning.

“Yo,” she shouts as she approaches the table, “what are you doing here?”

The boy looks confused, like he’s not sure if Kushina is addressing him or some other ghostly apparition behind him.

“Yeah, Pineapple, I’m talking to you! Get off my table.”

He eyes his peanut butter and jelly sandwich before speaking up.

“Pineapple?”

Kushina rolls her eyes. And here she was, thinking this kid was actually smart.

“Y'know...Pineapple. It’s a fruit. Yellow and spiky like your hair.” 

His expression remains uncertain.

“I don’t think we have those here.”

Right. Pineapples are a delicacy back in Uzushio. It’s probably too cold and dry to grow them here. Kushina feels a pang of homesickness at the thought of the tangy fruit.

She sits down at the opposite end of the table. Maybe if Kushina ignores him, the kid will go away and let her eat her lunch in peace.

Luck has never been on Kushina’s side, because after another beat of silence the kid scoots down the bench, sticking his hand out into Kushina’s unimpressed face.

“I’m Namikaze Minato. It’s nice to officially meet you,” he says, a smile crinkling his blue eyes upward.

Kushina sighs to herself. If she doesn’t humor the kid, he’ll probably pester her even more. Might as well get these stupid introductions out of the way.

“Uzumaki Kushina. But you probably knew that already.” She tries for a haughty tone, hoping it’ll scare him off from asking anymore questions.

“I did know that,” he responds as he hastily grabs her hand in a weird handshake/high-five. “You’re a transfer student from Uzushio. And Uzumaki Mito’s great niece.”

Wow. Pineapple seems to have done his research.

“Can you tell me anything about Fuinjutsu? You seem like you know more than any of the academy teachers.” Minato looks sheepish at his request, but while he was speaking, Kushina could see genuine curiosity and enthusiasm flash across his features.

She’s a little bit flattered, if she’s being perfectly honest. And his eyes, which have been transfixed on her since Monday morning, are the same shade of the ocean in Uzushio on a sunny afternoon.

So Kushina starts talking.

 

\----

 

She runs home that day, thrilled to tell Mito-sama about her new friend Minato. 

As she dashes down the gravel road up the hill, red hair trailing behind her, she tries to think about how she’ll describe Pineapple.

He’s smart, and naturally inquisitive. He’s very talented, top of the class, but never lets all the praise go to his head. He gets all uncomfortable and squirmy when Kushina teases him, so she tries to do it as much as possible because he’s usually so calm and collected. 

Maybe he can come over on Saturday and play by the river if Kushina asks nicely.

A grin bursts out over her face at all the possibilities, and she picks up speed, practically sprinting down the long driveway.

She’s so distracted, she doesn’t even notice the Jounin standing at the front door until she nearly crashes into them.

The Jounin turns at last minute, sidestepping Kushina like she’s merely some over-eager chihuahua. 

It’s a woman, young, with brown eyes and long blonde hair. She’s got this aura about her, like Kushina should be bowing to her or something. She’s also got the same diamond seal on her forehead as Mito-sama.

But she’s not one of the usual Jounin who come to visit. In fact, Kushina has never seen this woman before in her life. Alarm bells are ringing in her head.

She jumps back from the door stop, pulling a kunai from her backpack in one fluid motion. 

She brandishes it, a nonverbal threat to the mysterious Shinobi.

“Who are you and what do you want with Mito-sama?” Kushina squeaks out, hoping the woman doesn’t notice how her knees are shaking.

The woman looks at Kushina with a bored disinterest, choosing to glance at her finely painted nails instead of drawing her own weapon.

“Interesting question, brat. I was going to ask you exactly the same thing.”

Kushina’s frown deepens, her face warming at the Shinobi’s clear dismissal.

But before she can respond, the door opens, and Mito’s friendly smile greets them.

“Would you look at that,” Mito says sweetly, “both of my favorite girls coming to visit me at the same time.”

The Jounin woman reacts first, pulling Mito into a tight hug that Kushina doesn’t feel jealous about. Nope. Not at all.

She follows them inside, trying her best not to sulk about the change of attention.

 

\----

 

Thirty minutes later, Kushina learns more than she could ever care to know about this mysterious Jounin.

Like her name, for example.

Senju Tsunade, granddaughter to the first Hokage of Konoha and Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails. Student of the Sandaime, rising Medic-Nin.

And make no mistake, she may be more be closely related to Mito-sama than Kushina, but she is no Uzumaki.

Her hair is a dull brownish-blonde, with not a single red strand in sight. She’s got the fairer skin that most of these Konoha folk seem to have, indicative of their northern heritage. Her nose and cheekbones are all wrong, long and wide and regal the way the carved out faces of her ancestors are on the Hokage Monument. Even the feeling of Tsunade’s chakra is unfamiliar, an electric green humming energy to it where most Uzumakis have a soft and cool blue feel. She can’t even speak the local Whirlpool dialect of Uzushio, beyond a few simple conversational points.

But still, there’s something about her that Kushina is warming up to, despite their rocky meeting. She’s got a wicked sense of humor, and an intelligence to match. She treats Mito-sama with respect and tenderness, and when Mito-sama brings up Kushina’s “lessons”, Tsunade offers to help her with Taijutsu and Ninjutsu at a later date. 

She leaves the house just as quickly as she appeared, but Kushina thinks she might have made two new friends today. 

 

\----

 

The months roll around quickly enough, between Mito-sama’s gentle mentorship, and Ninja Academy with Minato, and Tsunade’s infrequent but memorable “girls night outs.” It’s late October on a chilly Sunday afternoon when two Jounin escorts show up on Mito’s doorstep. Kushina can’t believe it, but she’s almost reluctant to return home. Yes, she misses her father’s home-cooked meals and her neighborhood friends and the way the sun glints off the ocean on a clear afternoon, but Konoha has its own charms. There are people here Kushina has grown to love, places she likes to frequent.

As they set off down the road, Kushina stares at Mito-sama’s large and lonely house through watery eyes, until it falls behind the thick tree line and vanishes into nonexistence.

 

\----

 

Being home is strange. 

Her parents are the same as always, quiet and patient, and their cozy house feels quieter than the empty walls of the First Hokage’s mansion. It makes Kushina want to scream, but she holds herself back. She tries to go back to her pranks, but it feels useless when all she can hear is Mito-sama’s disappointed tone in her head. Plus, the Clan Elders are more watchful of her now that they know she has been picked as the next Jinchuuriki. Her entire life in Uzushio has been crammed under a microscope.

School is a bit better. Where Kushina was the lovable trouble-maker before, she is a natural born leader, resting comfortably at the top of her class. 

There’s an altercation early on with the biggest kid in her class, a bully who wants to tease kushina about her prolonged absence. Kushina, in her usual hotheadedness, challenges him to a Taijutsu match during lunch that ends with his face pressed into the dirt under Kushina’s petite sandal. Needless to say, the other kids start to regard her with hero-worship after that.

Mito-sama taught Kushina far more about chakra theory and Fuinjutsu than she had realized, and lessons are painfully boring when it’s just recap. So, Kushina digs out a notebook and starts doodling her own seals. She hoards them away, waiting for the moment she can bring them back to Konoha to test out with Minato.

Speaking of Minato, a letter addressed in his familiar messy scrawl appears in the Uzumaki mailbox not a week after Kushina has returned home. It’s short and sweet, but so painfully him.

_Dear Kushina,_

_I hope the journey home was brief and easy. School is terribly boring without you—even our teachers miss your joyful personality and unique perspective. As for me, I’ve started eating lunch alone again. Your great aunt gave me a complicated scroll the other day, and I need all the time I can get to understand this thing! That means going back to studying during recess again. Hopefully I can hear from you soon._

_Your friend,  
Namikaze Minato_

There’s a hastily scribbled pineapple underneath the note, and Kushina tears through her house for a pen and paper. She can’t write down what she wants to say fast enough, and by the time she’s done, she has a three-page letter, front-and-back.

Neither of the participants know it yet, but this is the start of a decades-long correspondence.

 

\----

 

Life ticks by slowly, but eventually it’s summer once again. Kushina doesn’t need any persuasion from her mother to pack her bags this year. She’s eager to return to Konoha.

Monsoon season comes early that year, and Kushina leaves Uzushio on a windy, rainy day. The day after she leaves, the skies clear up, as if it was Kushina herself who had summoned the summer storm.

 

\----

 

Kushina notices it the moment the Jounin wraps her strong arms around her in a hug. Tsunade has an engagement ring on her finger. 

Lacking any sense of tact, as most children do, Kushina asks her about it.

“How do you fight with that ring on your finger?” 

Tsunade’s brow wrinkles in confusion at the total non-sequitur. 

Kushina shuffles her feet uncomfortably. Maybe she’s been away too long and Tsunade’s forgotten about her, like Koi fish often do to their owners. But she’s already put herself out there, and she’s not backing down. 

“Can’t you break a finger wearing that when you punch someone?” 

Understanding dawns on Tsunade's face, and she throws her head back in laughter. 

She pulls a chain out from underneath her vest. It has a beautiful green pendant on it, the same tint as Tsunade’s chakra. 

“I put it on my necklace when I’m on active duty,” she says with something like pride.

“Who is it?” Kushina boldly asks, eyes trained unflinchingly on Tsunade’s face.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know him. He’s another Jounin in the village. Handsome and strong, with the kindest heart of any man I’ve ever met.” Tsunade looks off toward the sky as she says the words, like she’s envisioning him in her head.

Kushina wrinkles her nose at that. Love makes people weird. Just looking at Tsunade’s swooning face makes Kushina want to throw up. This better not interfere with their training.

Before the conversation can linger, Mito-sama calls them to the dinner table. 

 

\----

 

It’s funny, how little difference there is between the Konoha and Uzushio Ninja Academy. Sure, there’s a different teaching emphasis in each, and the history classes retell the same events with bias on either side, but the teachers, the kids, and the structure is all the same.

Kushina’s skin itches at the conformity, her boredom manifest in the small pranks she plays. Everyone in the school knows she’s the culprit, but no one can catch her. Her outsider status goes from okay to worse as everyone distrusts her now.

The only person who doesn’t is Minato. In fact, if Minato wasn’t at school, Kushina would be tempted to ditch and just study at the library. Mito-sama can’t complain if she’s still getting an education, right?

Minato is the same as ever, thank god. He’s shy and smart and with the right words, Kushina can talk him into any of her plans. 

She’s under the impression he’s a loner by choice until the incident one fateful Tuesday afternoon.

Kushina is running late to school, thanks to an intensive training session with Tsunade the night before. She overslept through her first alarm, then her second, and finally her third, so when she eventually wakes up, it’s almost lunch time. 

Instead of going through the front gates, where they’ll reprimand her for tardiness, Kushina sneaks around the perimeter, planning to hop the six-foot wire fence during lunch period. 

She’s crouching in the bushes, close to the shady tree and table where she and Minato eat when she sees them. Three boys, twice her size and two grades above her, approaching Minato. Kushina pulls herself back into the foliage, curious to see where this is going.

“Hey! Piss-Hair! Where’s your weird little girlfriend today?” The first bully starts. Kushina snorts at the nickname. This kid is older than her by a significant margin, but the best insult he can come up with is _Piss-Hair_?

Minato seems relatively unruffled by the appearance of the bullies, not even bothering to look up from his sandwich at the insult.

Another one of the boys grows angry at this, slamming his hands down on the wooden table.

“Why do you hang out with that foreigner anyways? Are you really that disloyal to Konoha?”

The other two boys smirk at the insult. In both Konoha and Uzushio, the worst thing a Shinobi can be is a traitor. It is not an accusation to be made lightly.

“Not at all,” Minato replies coolly. “It’s just that I've actually paid attention in our history classes and see the value of diplomacy with other Hidden Villages.” 

The boys blink in surprise, but Minato isn’t done because he smiles a shit eating grin and adds, “Those who are too stupid to learn the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes. I’m not planning on dying as a nameless foot soldier or Chunin cannon fodder. Are you?”

Kushina gasps from her perch in the foliage, surprised at Minato’s genuine insight. His eyes are nearly pinched closed, his mouth drawn into a taut, long line. He looks serious, like he has seen the atrocities of war in person, like his single handed determined will stop it all next time. It’s shockingly similar to the expressions of the faces carved on Konoha’s cliffside. 

She thinks of his natural curiosity, the kindness he treats people with, the way he excels at everything he tries. 

A year back, when they were playing by the brook behind Mito’s house, he shyly confessed that he dreamed of being Hokage. Before Kushina could ask why, he brushed off the idea, stating that as the son of civilians, he could never achieve that status. 

Kushina almost believes it, imagining him in the official Hokage robes. He’ll be a good leader, smart and fair and powerful. When he walks down the street, people will stop and stare. He’ll smile and wave back. Minato’s purity of heart is wasted on these stupid meatheads.

As if to prove her point, the lead bully rushes forward, grabbing at Minato’s golden hair.

Before Kushina can think about it, she’s hopping the fence and knocking the boy back with a chakra-loaded punch. He flies across the blacktop, landing with a solid crunch against the ground. The other children on the playground all stop, finally taking notice of what’s happening in Minato and Kushina’s corner. 

Kushina doesn’t care about all the eyes on her. She’s glaring at the other two bullies. 

The wind itself has picked up behind her, blowing her curtain of red hair out around her back like a blood-soaked cape. Her dark gray eyes are focused on the boys, unflinching and hard.

“You can try to take me.” Kushina spits out. The bullies are frozen in place, mouths agape in fear. 

“Or, you can go take care of your idiot friend and leave Minato alone for the foreseeable future.” 

She smiles.

“We wouldn’t want to have any more accidents.”

The boys sprint off to take care of their friend, who hasn't moved from where he fell. He must be knocked out cold, because his body isn’t moving, and he hasn’t said a word since Kushina hit him.

With the threat neutralized, Kushina turns back to Minato, who’s pressed against the wooden table behind her. 

“Are you alright?” She says breathlessly, body humming with adrenaline. 

She’s awed at the rush of devotion she feels in her chest to this boy. He will not be her Kage, not when he is from Konoha and her Uzushio, but she would protect him to death anyways. 

Minato must not feel the same way, because his fair skin flushes with anger and embarrassment.

“You shouldn’t have intervened. I can fight my own battles,” he growls out.

Kushina blinks in confusion. She’s never heard Minato sound so angry—and never with her.

She feels herself getting mad in turn. Did he want to get beaten up? Is this some stupid alpha male thing? He should be saying thank you!

“Are you kidding me?” she screeches in frustration, “I just saved your ass and you’re mad at me?!”

Minato leans into her personal space, screaming right back.

“I’m not your little sidekick,” he spits out. “In fact, I’m at the top of my class, unlike you. I was handling the situation just fine until you got all guard-dog on me.”

She jabs a finger in his face. 

“I never said that you can’t protect yourself!” She takes a deep breath in and out. “Maybe you don’t understand how this friendship thing works. I have your back, and you have mine.”

Something seems to click in Minato’s thick skull, because he backs up and when he speaks again, his voice is much softer.

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that...” he exhales loudly, trying to find his next words.

“It’s just that you draw so much attention to yourself when you do stuff like this. All the pranks and the fights and snide comments in class reflect on me too.”

“Are you saying you’re embarrassed to be my friend?”

Minato backtracks quickly at the sight of Kushina’s hurt face. 

“No,” he says softly. “I love being your friend. But I have to live in Konoha year-round. I’m not part of some prestigious clan. I don’t have a rich and famous great aunt to sweep me away when things get bad, or a cool Jounin to teach me Jutsu outside of the Academy.”

And just like that, Kushina understands. The bullies had a point when they accused Minato of treason. His only friend is a citizen of Uzushio, a member of their founding clan to boot. The nine months of the year Kushina isn’t in Konoha? Minato eats alone, friendless and lonely.

He is not an outcast by choice. He is an outcast because of her.

She thinks of his incredible potential and quiet genius, of his distant dreams of becoming Hokage, of making the world into a better place, without wars and violence and bloodshed. 

Kushina could never live with herself if she was the reason he gave all that up. 

“Kushina…?” Minato presses. She’s been silent for a while, posture sagged and eyes downcast at her revelation.

“I’m sorry,” she says, choking back tears. “Maybe it would be better if we weren’t friends, after all.”

And before Minato can open his mouth in protest, Kushina is vaulting back over the fence into the forest. 

She should’ve just stayed home today.

 

\----

 

Kushina begs Mito not to make her go to school for the rest of her stay in Konoha. Mito eventually relents because Kushina was so far ahead of her classes anyways. Kushina isn’t sure that they would even let her back after she hit that boy. She heard through Tsunade that he had to be hospitalized for a serious concussion. She doesn’t feel at all guilty, except for the possibility that it drew negative attention to Minato.

Speaking of Minato, Kushina refuses to see him. She always makes Mito-sama answer the door and turn him away, not even showing her face to her former best friend.

For the next few months she stays in Konoha, he tries to visit her once a week, and more on weekends when he doesn’t have schoolwork to do.

Kushina pushes down the grief in her gut.

 _It’s better this way, anyways_ , she tells herself.

She and Minato have very different life trajectories—this friendship would be unsustainable in the long run.

Minato’s persistent knocking on the front door seems to fade as the weeks pass, and when Kushina looks at the sky, she doesn’t think of his eyes anymore. 

 

\----

 

Three days before Kushina is set to head back to Uzushio, Tsunade takes her on a hike through the forest. They set a brisk pace to match the brisk and chill weather, following the brook for a couple miles till they stop at a pond with clear and mirror-like water, undisturbed by any current or aquatic life.

Tsunade motions for Kushina to sit, and she does so, pressing herself into the Jounin’s sturdy side.

Tsunade has been frequenting the mansion more often as of late, but not as the haughty and talented woman Kushina has come to admire. 

Instead, her posture has seemed slumped, like there’s an unbearable weight on her shoulders, and her eyes have dark, heavy bags even now in broad daylight.

Back in July, she would sweep into Mito-sama’s office, closing the curtains and slamming the door. Kushina would eavesdrop on the conversations between her and Mito, and though Kushina might not have recognized all the names or places, she understood the subject matter well enough. 

Tsunade was preoccupied with a brewing war, her former teacher and current Hokage’s expectations for her team nearly overwhelming. The Jounin and ANBU were the first to be sent out to fight, and so Tsunade did. She would come back every few weeks, skin unblemished and chakra presence strong. But her eyes told of a different scarring. Whatever horrors Tsunade witnessed on the battlefield were things she did not confess to Mito—at least, not when Kushina was listening in.

For five weeks in September and October, Tsunade did not appear, and Kushina feared the worst inside that lonely, looming mansion. She crawled into Mito’s bed in tears one night, and only Mito’s gentle reassurances stopped the tears.

Now, Tsunade is back, her lips sealed and her face impassive with what she has seen. She’s still wearing an engagement ring, but the green pendant necklace is nowhere to be seen. 

Kushina’s too afraid to ask.

They sit in silence, long enough that Kushina is starting to get twitchy, when Tsunade finally speaks up.

“Look,” she commands, gesturing at the pond by their feet.

She picks up a stone from the ground, throwing it cleanly into the water. Their reflections distort into a blur of red and yellow on the pond’s surface, originating from where the rock hit.

“The Shodaime once taught me about chakra theory at this very pond. Back then I was just his little princess, and he my doting grandpa.” There’s affection in her voice, for this man so famous across all of the Earth. Even legends start as people, Kushina supposes.

“It’s the ripple effect, or as he called it, the concentric circles theory. Every action we take affects the world around us, a greater and greater impact the further out it gets from the source. It explains why a smaller amount of chakra with better control will move mountains, where a person’s entire chakra supply can barely produce one shadow clone.”

Kushina nods, thinking of the clan kids at school who fail at Justus the first time around, their underdeveloped but powerful chakra nearly burning the air around them. She, as an Uzumaki, had to struggle with the problem a lot before she could develop proper control over her natural energy. 

The ripples slowly dies out, and Tsunade grabs another rock to toss into the water.

“It helps explains why we have war. Why one simple collapsed trade law, or one petty assassination can lead to the death of thousands of innocents. Imagine the power a Daimyo must have, that the rock they throw can cause things like the Second Shinobi War.”

Kushina stiffens. Locked away as she was for these past few months, she really didn’t know the conflicts with the other Hidden Villages had gotten so bad. Not enough to be called the Second Great Shinobi War. 

Beside her, Tsunade’s head sinks into her bent knees. Kushina can feel her vibrating with anger. 

No, wait.

She’s breathing too quickly for it to be rage, her chakra signature not as neatly packed as it usually is. 

She’s crying, Kushina thinks with surprise. 

Kushina scrambles for something to say or do, not used to seeing her personal idol so vulnerable.

She scoops up a big rock, chucking it into the water with a loud thunk. Water splashes up onto their sandals.

“Can’t the ripple effect be used for good, too?” Kushina shyly wonders.

Tsunade’s quaking form stills, but she does not look up.

Kushina presses forward anyways.

“Like if I save a man on the side of the road. He’s bleeding out, so I patch him up and provide an escort back to safety. Turns out the man I saved is a doctor, the most brilliant mind of the century. His hands go on to perform surgeries to save orphaned children with…”

Kushina stops, unsure where she’s going with the metaphor.

“Heart disease,” Tsunade suggests with a hint of humor in her voice. Of course she’d weigh in, with her medical expertise and all, Kushina thinks.

“Right, he performs surgeries on orphaned children to stop heart disease. And one of these kids grows up, aspiring to be like their doctor and savior. And when they become a doctor themselves, they invent the vaccine for a plague that would have destroyed a quarter of the Earth’s population otherwise,” Kushina finishes proudly. It’s a pretty good example, considering she came up with it on the fly.

“Doctors aren’t the only people that save lives,” Tsunade mutters. “The child could have grown up to be a diplomat or foreign dignitary, who could have averted the entire Second Shinobi War.”

Kushina blinks in surprise. She’s never considered politics that way before.

“I guess you're right,” Kushina admits, “But the point remains the same. My one small action saved countless lives. It’s just as easy to do good as it is harm.”

Tsunade looks up, red-rimmed eyes seeking out Kushina’s own.

“In fact,” Kushina adds, “these concentric circles are just degrees of separation. The closest rings are friends and family, who feel our influence directly. Outside of that is neighbors, coworkers, everyone else in Konoha or Uzushio or whatever town we live in. And outside of that is the rival Hidden Villages and trading outposts, and finally the whole world.”

It’s a bit like spider webs or food chains Kushina’s seen in old textbooks, or the feeling of chakra thrumming under her skin. Even in Mito’s empty, lonely house, she is connected to the whole world around her. She will never be lonely, not when her actions have consequences, not as she lives and breathes and walks on this earth.

Tsunade reaches for her hand, gaze still fixed on Kushina’s own. Kushina gulps in nervousness, unsure of what the Jounin woman will say.

“My brother died two weeks ago.”

Kushina grips Tsunade’s hand tighter. She never had the chance to meet him. She didn’t even know Tsunade had siblings or a family besides her and Mito-sama.

“He was a Genin sent on a war mission. That’s how bad it’s gotten. My own village sends children to their death because some Daimyo deems it so,” her voice cracks partway through in pain, but beneath the weak tone of voice is a steady current of rage, hot as Mito’s demon chakra itself.

Kushina can’t let Tsunade despair like this.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” she whispers, not even sure of the boy’s name. “But you can’t give up yet. Not when Mito-sama is still alive, not when I’m still here, not without your fiance and your teammates and the Sandaime.”

Tsunade glaces at her engagement ring now, shiny and golden after all these months.

“You are still a part of this world, and your actions have consequences, so do good on behalf of your brother. No one who loved you would want to see you give up this way.”

Tsunade says nothing, but she squeezes Kushina’s hand tight in unspoken understanding. 

They sit in silence for a while, occasionally throwing rocks into the pond so they don’t have to see their own tear-stained faces.

 

\----

 

Kushina’s trip home is tense, her Jounin guard on constant lookout for any ambushes. 

Amazingly, they make it back safe, and Kushina returns to an empty house.

The elders explain to her that her parents, both skilled battlefield medics, have been called away to serve in war efforts. Kushina is old enough to take of herself now, though, so she does not stay with any other Uzumakis.

It’s a lonely few months.

 

\----

 

It’s a clear Monday morning in January when one of her uncles knocks on the door. Atsuo, she remembers. He’s not a Shinobi—in fact, a lot of the branch Uzumaki families aren’t, but his wife works in the Uzukage’s office and he’s pretty in tune with village politics. Most civilians are, in a village this small. 

She feels an indescribable sense of dread. There is no explanation for why he’s waiting for her art the door, instead of the mailman who drops off letters from her parents and Mito-sama once a week. 

She abandons her breakfast, runny scrambled eggs already cooling as she answers the door.

 

\----

 

Kushina is almost nine and a half the day she finds out she is an orphan. Atsuo cries as he breaks the news, heartbroken over the loss of family, heartbroken at a little girl’s misfortune. She imagines Tsunade’s northern features, a perfect mirror image of her own family member’s face. 

She demands to know how, and he recites the report to her through sniffles and hiccups.

They were Medic-nin, this much she knew, assigned to support the frontline Uzushio troops. It was a dangerous job, but Medic-nin were usually safe in their tents with the sick and dying. Shinobi kill indiscriminately, but they try to respect the fallen wherever possible.

But this was war. It was different than some minor assassination mission. 

Hanzo the Terrible, leader of Amegakure, was on the field that day. The soldiers of Uzushio fought well, but they couldn’t stand up to his military might—not when he had bombed their camps and killed any Medic-nin that could have healed the soldiers on the field. 

The Jutsu was so effective that there were no remains to bring back to Uzushio. Kushina’s parents had to be identified by their dental records.

Kushina thinks of concentric circles in a peaceful pond to the far North. Her kind, gentle parents died saving people. Their ripple effect was positive.

In a perfect world, their impact will be far reaching and powerful. Maybe it will indirectly end this war, maybe even all future wars. Maybe it will save some other Shinobi’s life, like Tsunade and her team, or other serving Uzumakis.

But it isn’t a perfect world. All the people they tried to save were also dead. Ripples can’t extend past the pond itself, and the pond her parents existed in was tiny, indeed.

She pushes the thought down immediately. She refuses to believe that her parents died a worthless and forgettable death. Their memories weren’t forgotten the moment their hearts stopped beating, because Kushina is still here. 

At least, that’s what she tells herself as she cries herself to sleep that night.

 

\----

 

Life and war go on.

The months pass by in a haze for Kushina. Her distant family hangs around the small house more, and Kushina drags herself to school every day, but life feels empty for her. She excels at the Academy, but she avoids the other kids when they beg to play and study with her after school. She spends countless hours in the library, throwing herself into Fuinjutsu. Her parents will never see her graduate, move through the ranks from Genin, to Chunin, to Jounin, maybe even to Uzukage, but she’ll do it for them anyway.

She completely forgets about her actual duties until a warm June night when she is summoned to the Uzukage’s office. 

There, two Jounin from Konoha and two Uzumaki elders are waiting for her.

 _Mito-sama has fallen ill_ , they say in urgent, hushed whispers. 

_You have been summoned to Konoha, immediately._

They leave that night. Kushina has exactly one change of clothes and she forgot her toothbrush in the bathroom, but it doesn’t matter.

All she can imagine is that morning so long ago when Atsuo came to her door to break the news of her parents’ death. 

_Please_ , she prays to whatever god may be out there, _not Mito-sama too _.__

__

__\----_ _

__

__They travel swiftly, making it to Konoha in three days. As they travel North, Kushina can see smoke billowing across the horizon where not too distant battles are being fought. It feels like a world away from her current existence._ _

__Under the cover of night, they enter the village._ _

__The Shodaime’s mansion is black against the night sky, and from down the road, Kushina can feel that burning, malevolent chakra she felt the very first time she came here._ _

__She steels herself, expecting the worst._ _

__Inside, she’s greeted by both familiar and unfamiliar faces._ _

__There are two silvery redheads—two more Uzumaki clan elders, she realizes with a start. Beside them is Tsunade, who looks more beaten up than she did a year ago, and a nice-looking old man._ _

__Kushina can’t place his face, feeling the strangest sense of Deja Vu, until she remembers where she’s seen him before._ _

__How could she not have recognized the man whose face is plastered across the Hokage monument? This is Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage of Konoha and Tsunade’s teacher._ _

__Tsunade’s tired features stretch into a friendly smile, and she ushers Kushina down the familiar old hallways. The other three guests follow._ _

__Finally, they reach Mito’s bedroom._ _

__“She wants to talk to you first,” Tsunade says quietly, as if she’s sharing a secret intended only for Kushina’s ears._ _

__Kushina pauses at the door, turning around expectantly._ _

__Tsunade shakes her head. “No. This will be private. Just between you two.”_ _

__Kushina nods. She gets the sense that Tsunade has already said her goodbyes._ _

__With more bravery than most people will ever muster in their whole lives, Kushina pushes open the doors to the master bedroom._ _

__

__\----_ _

__

__Even in that first meeting with Mito-sama, Kushina had never seen her as frail. Sure, she was old, older than any of the other Uzumaki elders, but she always had this presence. Her body was made of flesh and blood, but her core was solid iron._ _

__Now, she lays in the large bed, hair fanned out across her pillows, and she looks frail._ _

__Her face is obscured by the shadows of the room, eyes closed and body eerily still._ _

__When Kushina arrives, she opens one eye, motioning for Kushina to sit at her side. Kushina rushes over quickly, careful not to disturb the bed too much as she perches on one side._ _

__“Kushina, dear,” Mito starts, voice barely above a whisper, “give me your hand.”_ _

__Kushina complies, unsure what to say. Her hand is small and supple in Mio's bony, wrinkled one. These are hands that have worked and loved, that have seen the whole world._ _

__“You are too young,” she says without insult in her voice._ _

__“If I could save you from this duty I would. Your future is too bright to be tarnished by this burden.”_ _

__Kushina nods. She had almost forgotten her purpose for being here. Who could blame her? She was so young when the Elders decided she would be the next Jinchuuriki. She was too young to understand what that responsibility meant. Even now, it is outside of her comprehension._ _

__“But,” Mito breathes out, “I am very old and very sick. I will not last the week. So, you will have to take on this burden to protect the rest of the world.”_ _

__“It’s not fair,” Kushina finds herself confessing, still a petulant young child at heart._ _

__“No, it’s not,” Mito agrees._ _

__They’re both silent for a moment. There’s knocking on the door, and then Tsunade and the others are entering the room._ _

__“Do not forget that you are more than this,” Mito says, fingers still entwined with Kushina._ _

__Kushina holds onto her great aunt’s hand until the Sandaime politely asks her to remove it._ _

__When she pulls her arm away, it’s shaking uncontrollably._ _

__

__\----_ _

__

__When later asked, Kushina will admit she doesn’t remember much of the ritual. There are flashes of feelings and colors, but nothing concrete._ _

__She is cold. She has to take her shirt off for them to draw the seals on her. The blood smeared across her arms and chest and stomach is freezing against the cold night air._ _

__She feels the scratchy carpet beneath her torso, and there’s a firm grip on her arms and firmer voice in her ears as Tsunade checks her vitals._ _

__She nearly blacks out from the fear, but a burst of chakra jolts her out of her unconsciousness._ _

__Then comes the burning._ _

__It starts at her fingertips, spreading through her hands to her arms to her chest, and from there to the rest of her body. It’s a searing, itchy pain, like Kushina’s skin is too small to contain her, like flames are burning her from inside out._ _

__She screams, loud as the day she was born, and she doesn’t stop because the Burning. Doesn’t. Stop._ _

__This time when she blacks out, she can’t even focus enough to feel relief._ _

__

__\----_ _

__

__She wakes to the sound of birds chirping. Kushina is in the guest bedroom she normally stays in when she’s in Konoha. Early dawn light trickles in from the window above her bed, and she can see Tsunade passed out in her desk chair, which has been pulled up next to the nightstand._ _

__She opens her mouth to wake Tsunade up, and no sound comes out. In fact, her throat feels like it’s been scraped raw._ _

__After a few hoarse whispers, Tsunade’s eyes flutter open. She blinks sleep from her eyes, and then she’s lunging for Kushina, checking her pulse and chakra signature and whatever other medical mumbo jumbo. When she’s done with that, she pulls Kushina into a firm hug._ _

__“What happened?” Kushina rasps once they break from their embrace._ _

__Tsunade’s face falls, her relief at Kushina’s survival tarnished by the memory of last night._ _

__“The transfer of the Nine-Tails went off without a hitch. Well, mostly. We didn’t expect it to hurt you so much. You screamed so much that you hurt your throat. It’s why you can’t speak right now.”_ _

__Oh. Kushina really doesn’t remember any of this._ _

__“Mito?” she manages to choke out._ _

__“She passed away painlessly in her sleep shortly after we transferred the Nine Tails. There will be a memorial service in her name in three days. You’re welcome to attend if you’re feeling better. After that, you can head back to Uzushio.”_ _

__Kushina feels wetness on her cheeks. She knew Mito-sama was going to pass away once they extracted the Demon, but it’s different, now that she’s really gone._ _

__There’s a warm hand brushing the hair off of Kushina’s forehead._ _

__Tsunade waits for her to stop crying._ _

__“You need to sleep. What you experienced was intense and traumatic, and there’s a lot of strain on your body as it adjusts to all this extra chakra. I’ll get you some water, and check back in in thirty minutes, okay?”_ _

__Kushina nods, unsure what else to do, and Tsunade is getting up, the door clicking quietly behind her as she closes it._ _

__Now that she’s alone, Kushina can focus beyond her sheer exhaustion and itchy throat._ _

__Her heart is beating faster than usual, and her body feels warm, bordering on feverish._ _

__She flexes her chakra pathways experimentally. She can sense something boiling beneath her cool-to-the-touch Uzumaki chakra. With a start, she realizes it’s the well of the Demon Fox’s chakra. She gets the feeling that if she tried to use it, it would only burn her._ _

__There’s one other change, though._ _

__Kushina feels like she’s got an extra set of eyes on her, like she’s not as alone in this room as she initially appears to be._ _

__Her feeling of confusion gives way to a sudden surge of foreign, violent hatred. It’s unfamiliar and intrusive, someone pushing their thoughts into Kushina’s head._ _

__With dawning horror, Kushina figures out what it is._ _

__The Demon Fox, the most powerful of the Tailed Beasts, is a sentient creature._ _

__And it _hates_._ _

__And it is now a permanent passenger in Kushina’s body._ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: things get a bit violent in this chapter. Nothing more extreme than canon but still. This is a heads up.

The Second Great Shinobi War drags on for five years.

By the time Hanzo’s troops and Amegakure are razed to the ground, Kushina has graduated at the top of her class in Uzushio. She’s the rookie of the year, a kunoichi to boot, and she’s placed on a team with two middling civilian-born boys. Their Jounin-sensei is a distant cousin of hers, with brilliant red hair the same shade as her own. Yusei is friendly and positive, with a goofy sense of humor that Kushina’s fellow genin adore. Kushina herself is indifferent. He knows about as much as her about Fuinjutsu, but Kushina is ten years younger than him. She tells herself she’s not resentful or jealous—nope, not because his civilian parents are still alive. Not because no one from his branch bothered to visit her after she was orphaned.

She’s been a Genin for one year when it’s announced that the Joint Chunin Exams will be held in Konoha. She hears her two teammates gossiping after practice one day, giggling about how all the other Genin will be stuck doing extra training while they can relax. Apparently, Yusei didn’t both to submit their names for consideration. 

Kushina is livid.

That evening, she storms down the cobblestone roads in the direction of the Uzukage’s offices. She and him are quite familiar, with this whole successor to Mito-sama and inheritor of the Nine-Tails business. She knows that she won’t be able to convince Yusei on her own. 

But with a bit of support from the Uzukage, Kushina will be making Chunin in no time.

The office workers outside his office greet her kindly. They don’t even raise their eyebrows when she asks to see him, simply directing her to a chair. The wait will be about twenty minutes. 

_Anything for an orphaned Uzumaki_ , she hears them whisper.

 _Anything for the Demon-host,_ they think to themselves.

The Uzukage throws open the doors to his office in a sudden rush of movement.

“Kushina-chan!” He booms loudly. “How are you?”

Kushina straightens out her posture, flashing the most powerful Shinobi in Uzushio a big smile. 

“Better,” she replies sweetly, “now that I get to see your ugly mug.”

He lets out a deep chuckle at that, ushering her into his office.

The Sandaime Uzukage of Uzushio is a middle-aged man, with dark skin and darker hair indicative of his Southern ancestry. He is a member of one of the lesser clans of Uzushio, his only connection to the Uzumaki line through marriage. He’s a big man in both stature and weight, but make no mistake, underneath his round physique is sheer muscle and massive chakra pathways. 

To the people of Uzushio, he is a hero, kind and powerful and a force of positivity in this uncertain world. 

Kushina, perceptive as ever, sees through this ruse.

The Uzukage is a good and kind man, yes, but his laidback and jovial nature makes him a puppet leader.

Kushina knows that the Council of Elders, comprised of almost entirely Uzumaki Shinobi, rule Uzushio from the shadows. They are the ones who decided she would inherit the title of Jinchuuriki, the people she has to impress and appease if she ever has a chance of becoming the Uzukage.

The Sandaime is pretty much useless to Kushina—except for cases like now.

She arranges herself neatly in one of his chairs, a perfect display of girlish naivete to remind him of his own pampered daughters. Kushina has grown clever in the years since her parents’ deaths.

One they’re settled, the Sandaime folds his large hands across his desk, angling his head towards Kushina.

“What can I do for you?” he asks patiently.

 _Be direct. Rip the bandaid off as fast as possible,_ Kushina thinks.

“I want you to submit me and my team into consideration for the Chunin Exams.”

The Sandaime blinks in surprise.

“Kushina,” he sighs, running a hand through his thinning hair, “That choice is really up to your sensei—”

“He’s wrong,” Kushina interrupts.

The Sandaime frowns, annoyed at her insolence.

“With all due respect, sir,” Kushina adds on placatingly, “I think that we’re just as qualified as any of the other teams from Uzushio.”

“You mean that you are just as qualified as the other teams. Your teammates aren’t here begging with you,” The Sandaime says in his best I’m-older-than-you-so-listen-to-me voice.

“Yes,” Kushina mumbles. “I am.”

“But,” she hastily adds, “It isn’t fair that I am being held back because of my teammates. Wouldn’t be better for them to be challenged than for me to be stifled?”

If Mito was here, she’d chide Kushina for using the word ‘fair’. 

_Life is hard and cruel. Complaining about fairness won’t solve anything_ , Mito would say.

But Mito isn’t here. Her body is probably no more than white bones at this point, decomposing in some elaborate tomb beside Senju Hashirama back in Konoha.

The Sandaime hums thoughtfully, almost like he’s convinced by Kushina’s argument. She’s not fooled, though. He’ll appease her with empty promises and a fatherly pat on the back as he ushers her out of the office, and she’ll never hear back about the Chunin Exams. She needs to make him agree, right here and right now.

“We’re going to be up against massive, powerful villages like Suna and Konoha and Iwa,” she points out. “None of the other Genin from Uzushio have a chance of passing, not against these children who’ve already fought and survived a war.”

“We can’t afford to look weak,” she adds gravely. “A village as small and vulnerable as us? They’d reduce us to a pile of rubble in a heartbeat. Just for a couple scrolls on sealing.”

The Uzukage’s eyes are wide with fear, his own doubts and insecurities being voiced to him by a thirteen-year-old girl. 

“Like Amegakure…” he mutters.

“Send me,” Kushina begs. “I can do this. I can make them question the very idea of invading Uzushio.”

Kushina’s eyes are bright, almost unnaturally so in the afternoon sun. Her red hair is fluttering in the ocean breeze, which is swept in from the Uzukage’s open window. There’s an inhuman air about her, this spirited and powerful child.

She’s so focused on convincing him of her cause that she doesn’t notice the blistering heat in the office, and the acidic chakra energy seeping out from her underdeveloped pathways.

The Uzukage does, though, and he is quick to agree to Kushina’s demands. 

She flashes him a childish grin, bowing and skipping out the door.

The Uzukage looks down at his hands, which are damp from nervousness.

It takes two hours for the stench of demon chakra to leave his office.

 

\----

 

Returning to Konoha after four years is a strange experience. It looks shockingly similar, like they hadn’t just fought a war for half a decade. Instead of heading across town to the secluded foothills where Mito-sama once lived, the Konoha Jounin escort Kushina and her team to the downtown area.

If her memory serves her right, a lot of the non-clan kids from the Academy lived in this area.

Kushina keeps on expecting to turn a corner and see a familiar face or shock of blonde hair. She scolds herself when she mistakes the red hair of her fellow Uzumaki Genin for Mito’s own, and every Jounin that walks by reminds Kushina of Tsunade.

She’s not sure that Tsunade even survived the war. There were rumors of her and her teammate’s conquests in battle—Sanin, they called them. Tsunade’s reputation as a medic preceded her, where whispers of her ability to resurrect even the dead reached Uzushio.

But there were no letters or visits from Tsunade, and in the year following the war, there were no reports of her presence, abroad or within Fire Country.

She pushes the thought away. Kushina can’t afford to get distracted. Not now, when she’s come all this way. Not when her future is on the line.

Still, that night, Kushina has trouble sleeping, her thoughts a swirl of memories of the past and anxieties about the future.

 

\----

 

The first part of the exam was a breeze, Kushina thinks to herself as she bandages her fists in preparation.

It was a pen and paper test, of all things. 

Yes, the theory was incredibly difficult, but Kushina has been reading scrolls above her age level since...well, since she could read.

Most of the other Genin in the room, however, were left scrambling for answers. It was a pretty poorly executed stealth test, to be honest. Kushina caught at least five other Genin blatantly cheating that the Jounin supervisor failed to notice, so either the administration was going easy, or Kushina has been severely overestimating their capabilities.

Either way, she passed. As did her two teammates, with a little help from her.

So now she’s here, running through some pre-battle katas.

The second round of the test is a spar. It’s randomly matched, till one opponent is knocked out. Everything is allowed, except for intent to kill. 

It’s the most efficient way to cut the number of Chunin candidates in half and allows all the visiting Shinobi to get a sneak peak of various fighting styles and techniques.

Kushina herself is eager to watch, and even more eager to spar.

 

\----

 

She steps into the ring at the sound of her buzzer. She’s tied her long hair back, not willing to take any risks of it being used against her. 

She’s dressed simply, the Uzushio Forehead Protector glinting proudly in the sunlight.

She has a pouch of senbon strapped to her waist, but more importantly, a scroll of blank paper and a working pen.

Premade seals are banned unless they’ve been checked over beforehand—otherwise, Jounin-senseis might preload them with chakra beforehand, giving any competing Genin an unfair advantage.

Kushina doesn’t care, though. She knows it’s better to have pre-prepared seals, preloaded if possible, but she’s always been a fan of improvisation.

Some of her best Jutsu has been drawn in the heat of the moment, when her heart is beating with adrenaline and her fingers are automatically marking things down.

Besides, if things start to go south, Kushina has her bloodline limit to rely on. 

Her opponent is an older boy from Iwa, scars across his face and a look in his eye that says he’s seen war, maybe even fought in it before.

When he sees her he scoffs, spitting at her feet.

He probably wasn’t expecting to be fighting a little girl.

 _Good_ , Kushina thinks. 

_Let him underestimate me._

The now-familiar sense of hatred is gathering at the back of her head, but Kushina doesn’t mind. She’s pissed off too. This boy is like every other one of those schoolyard bullies, picking on her and her friends because they perceived them as too small and defenseless. The Hidden Villages treat Uzushio the same way.

Kushina is sick of it.

The bell chimes for them to start, and Kushina is whipping out her scroll, faster than the boy can reach her. 

She starts simple, a defensive barrier to stall him.

With a fluid stroke of her pen, a flash of purple light flings up right as the boy steps within hitting distance.

He’s too late to stop his momentum, though, and his fist goes flying into the barrier with an impressive amount of strength.

For a moment, the barrier gives, before flinging him back across the arena, twice as hard as he approached it.

Kushina winces at the crack of his skull against the ground, glad he didn’t manage to hit her.

Still, she steps back from where she’s split the arena in half with the barrier. It’s better to be cautious than cocky, and this next seal might take a bit longer to create.

By the time he pulls himself to his feet, Kushina is halfway done with her next seal. She’s got a natural affinity for wind, so she’s decided to use it to her advantage.

Across the arena, the boy is flashing through some of his own seals. As noted earlier, he’s from Iwa. There’s a good chance he’ll try to hit Kushina with some sort of Earth Jutsu.

It’s just a matter of her finishing her seal before him.

Kushina drops the barrier, hoping to distract her opponent for an extra few seconds.

It works—he stops in the middle of his hand seals, surprised at the sudden lack of chakra on the field.

Kushina keeps her own head down, scrambling to finish her seals. 

Her opponent catches on quickly, returning to his seals with more urgency than before.

Just as she’s finishing her last symbol, she hears the locking sound of an activated Jutsu. She has milliseconds to send hers out before the boy can hit her.

In those hazy memories of a childhood spent in Konoha, Kushina recalls one of Mito-sama’s early lessons. It was before Kushina had been tested for a chakra affinity, before she knew that Shinobi had natural elements their body interacted with on a better wavelength. 

_Water, Wind, Earth, Fire, and Lightning._

Each with a reciprocal relationship with the others. Uzumakis, being from the Land of Whirlpools, are almost always aligned with water or wind.

The Iwa-nin is probably proficient in earth or fire. Kushina prays for earth—fire will trump her wind with little effort.

Her hands glow with concentrated chakra, slamming down into the paper. 

A mighty gust of wind is released, powerful enough to knock a grown man over. It kicks up the dirt in the area, creating a dust storm even Kushina can’t see through.

If Kushina could've seen through the dust cloud, she would’ve seen her hunch had been right.

The boy was rock affinity.

Unfortunately, she also would’ve seen that his Jutsu didn’t require an active caster, not once he had channeled the energy and picked a target.

Unlike Kushina, whose hands are still pouring chakra into her seal.

The roaring of the wind in her ears blocks out a growing rumbling from beneath her feet.

And it hits.

Hard.

The rock spike blows upward at Kushina, tearing through her midriff like paper. 

As she’s impaled on the rock spike, Kushina’s hands are torn away from her seal, her whole body brutally lifted up and suspended mid-air where the stone entered in through her stomach and out through her back.

The gale-force winds wink out of existence, leaving shocked silence among the audience as the dust finally clears.

On one end of the arena is the boy from Iwa, crumpled against one wall where the wind Justu pushed him back. He’s twitching, still conscious if in pain.

On the other end is Kushina, whose ragged breaths accompany percussive blood drips.

She doesn’t register the pain, as shocked as she is. She doesn’t feel blood caking onto her clothes, doesn’t see how it blends in perfectly with her long, loose hair.

All she sees is the boy on the other end of the arena, pulling himself up from the ground. He begins limping in her direction, ready to finish her off.

No.

She won’t lose like this.

She won’t let herself be pinned this badly. Not here and not like this. She’s come too far to fail.

Get up, Mito’s voice rings in her ears.

Except it’s not really Mito’s voice. It’s something deeper. Something older.

Against all conventional medical wisdom, Kushina pushes her feet hard into the ground, leveraging herself up and off the rock spike.

The moment she comes free, blood gushes out from the hole in her chest, which is torn clean through.

Kushina stills as the boy creeps closer and closer.

There is a growing heat around her midriff, not the cold she would expect from such drastic blood loss. There’s a tingling sensation, oh so similar to all those years ago in Mito’s mansion.

Kushina feels the moment the Nine-Tails’ chakra rushes through her, as it knits bone and muscle and blood back together. It’s electrifying and terrifying.

Her opponent can’t see this happening, hidden as it is underneath the shroud of Kushina’s hair. 

She remains still, the apex predator springing a trap for its unwitting prey.

The boy pulls his fist back, ready to hit her again.

Kushina lets him swing it forward, the force of the chakra concentration rippling the air around it.

A shark-like grin as it nears closer and closer to her face.

Because the mastery over Fuinjutsu and the power of the Tailed Demon? They’re both family heirlooms, courtesy of her powerful Uzumaki lineage.

But they’re not the only things she has inherited.

The boys fist stops short an inch from her face. Then, slowly but surely, it is dragged backwards away from Kushina’s body and towards the blood-red mud at her feet.

A glowing chain of pure chakra has ensnared the boy’s right hand.

He panics, unfamiliar with the Uzumaki bloodline limit, and swings his other hand towards Kushina.

She catches it with another chain, easily, and drags it down to where the first hand is waiting.

The boy tries his feet next, and Kushina gives him the same treatment for each successive kick.

Five minutes since the match first started, Kushina has her opponent pinned to the ground, forehead at her sandaled feet.

She’s not done here, though. The match finishes when one of them can’t continue to fight. And her chakra chains, useful as they are, don’t cause pain. The moment she lets them fall, her opponent will be back on her, smarter and stronger than he was thirty seconds ago.

Kushina resorts to drastic measures.

She unzips the senbon pouch tied at her waist. She ignores the wet stickiness of it, unphased at the sight of her own blood, and pulls out three senbon with a practiced grace.

This trick is no family secret.

Many, many years ago, Tsunade took Kushina out for training after a particularly brutal day at the Academy.

Kushina’s face was puffy and red from angry tears, upset at how all the boys, including her Sensei, treated her. They spat the word Kunoichi like an insult or a weakness, and Kushina had believed them.

Upon recounting this to Tsunade, the Jounin’s face grew hard and cold. She herself had dealt with these crippling expectations and harassments, and even succumbed to them, forcing herself to learn medical Jutsu so the men on her team could focus on fighting.

 _But_ , Tsunade told Kushina, _a wicked smile upon her face, medical Jutsu is far more complex than the art of healing._

It requires precise chakra control and an intimate knowledge of how the body is pieced together. 

_One can do a lot with that sort of information_ , Tsunade whispered, like it was a secret between her and Kushina.

She described how it could be used for torture, knowing the exact amount of blood a human can lose before they die, how much pain they can stand before they black out. 

A medic knows how chakra pathways work and how to block them, without the use of a bloodline limit like the Byakugan or Sharingan.

A medic knows pressure points—places to hit the hardest to cause the most damage.

That evening, she taught Kushina the basics.

_The knee, the shoulder, the wrist._

Flash forward to now, where Kushina is poised and ready to strike. 

She has practiced these moves with the senbon many times now, but it is fickle work. One wrong move and her opponent might be paralyzed forever.

Guess he’ll have to stay very still, Kushina thinks to the rumble of the demon chakra.

She’s quick about it, never one for sadism. The senbon slip lightly under the skin without a drop of blood in sight. 

If it weren’t in a sparring ring, Kushina’s actions could be mistaken for acupuncture.

With the three senbons slotted into her opponents’ skin, she dispels the chakra chains. She catches his paralyzed body and guides it carefully to the ground, careful not to jar the metal needles.

With her opponent laid out neatly in the blood-stained mud of the arena, Kushina faces out towards her audience.

There is deafening silence.

And then, a flurry of motion and a dull roar.

 

\----

 

Kushina is dragged off for medical help immediately, her opponent the same. She complies, letting herself be bustled and carried about. She is still in shock from the events of her spar, the world around her surrealistic blobs of color.

The face doesn’t come into focus, but the voice does.

“Jesus, kid, you really know how to make an impression.”

Kushina’s tired gray eyes blink open, only to meet the kind brown of Senju Tsunade. 

Except, she doesn’t look very happy to see Kushina.

“You’re alive?” Kushina says, but it comes out a slur. She might have overestimated her general wellbeing back in the arena.

“Yes, I’m alive, you idiot,” Tsunade grumbles, experienced with interpreting patient-babble, “The fact that you think some Shinobi from Suna could bring me down is offensive.”

Kushina lets out an apologetic whimper, bringer her shaking hands up to Tsunade’s arm. Tsunade bats it away without looking, still focused on removing Kushina’s blood-soaked shirt.

“Don’t think we aren’t going to talk about that little senbon trick you used. When I taught you pressure points, I didn’t mean you should use them in some friendly spar. Never mind the fact that you’re just a Genin and your Sensei shouldn’t—”

Tsunade breaks off suddenly, her face fixed upon the point where the rock spike had torn through Kushina’s body.

Kushina lifts her head up to get a look, and is unsurprised to find fresh, pink skin there.

Tsunade leans in close to Kushina, whispering.

“It’s the Demon, isn’t it?”

Kushina nods, opens her mouth and closes it, then opens her mouth to speak.

“I knew it healed small things, like paper cuts and broken toes. But I didn’t know it would do something like this so quickly.”

Tsunade nods, scribbling something down onto her clipboard.

“Well, that’s something we’ll have to keep in mind in the future. For now, though, we’re going to have to make sure no one asks too many questions.”

Kushina blinks in surprise. She had forgotten that her status as Jinchuuriki is supposed to be a secret. There’s probably only two people in all of Konoha, and not too many more in Uzushio, that know she is the container for the Nine-Tails.

“Luckily,” Tsunade continues, “there happens to be an immensely skilled doctor volunteering their services for the Joint Chunin Exams. Nobody’s going to raise an eyebrow if I claim I healed you.”

Kushina bobs her head up and down a couple times in agreement. 

She’s sure that Tsunade would have healed her in a heartbeat if the Nine-Tails hadn’t already.

She drifts off to the sensation of Tsunade’s calloused hands in her hair.

 

\----

 

After a long shower and good night’s sleep in the medical quarters, Kushina wakes to Tsunade’s prodding.

Apparently, they postponed the rest of the matches to today, after Kushina’s spectacle.

Tsunade guides her out to the arena, sitting beside her in the spectator section.

She ignores how all the eyes in the stadium fixate on her, sitting neatly next to Tsunade as if nothing is amiss with her.

She spots Yusei’s familiar hair, and the form of the Iwa boy she fought with yesterday. She feels a tinge of guilt at that but bottles it up. He’s the one who impaled her with a rock spike.

Thankfully, the announcer calls out the next match, and all eyes switch from Kushina to the ring below.

Kushina looks on with obvious interest. She’s desperate to know what her fellow Genin have in store. 

 

\----

 

After a long five hours of sparring, in which both of Kushina’s teammates get their asses kicked, a familiar Konoha face enters the ring.

Namikaze Minato’s golden hair reflects off the bright afternoon sunlight, his blues eyes striking even from this far up.

Kushina has tried not to spare any thoughts for her old childhood friend since she broke off their relationship. It hurts less when she avoids those wistful memories all together.

But here she is, five years later and back in Konoha, and Pineapple-Boy has made it all the way to the Chunin Exams.

She leans forward in her seat, desperately hopeful and curious to see what the prodigy is planning.

His opponent steps out, a massive Uchiha boy from Konoha. He’s definitely a few years older than Minato, the kind of Genin that was never promoted to Chunin due to the war. This is the kind of person who has seen battles, who has long since activated his Sharingan and learned his clan’s personal techniques.

The announcer is counting down, and Kushina is waiting with baited breath.

Which turns out to be quite unnecessary, because the match is over faster than Kushina’s own. 

The Uchiha boy is strong and quick, the red of his Sharingan blinking into existence almost instantly.

But it doesn’t matter, because Minato reacts quicker, so graceful and fast that Kushina can barely pick up his form on the field.

He lands an overwhelming amount of hits, the lack of force made up for in quantity, his eyes never connecting with the Sharingan.

Good. Mito-sama once explained that an Uchiha Genjutsu is one of the most difficult attacks to escape. She doubts that even Minato could break free of those hypnotic eyes.

Back in the ring, he breaks away from his fellow Shinobi, darting back and flashing through a complicated set of hand seals.

The Uchiha releases a massive fireball, only for it to be doused by an imposing and elegant water dragon.

Minato stands at the source, his precise chakra control manifesting in sharp blue lines around his body. He looks slightly uncomfortable, the way he used to when Kushina teased him for too long. It would be imperceptible to anyone else, but this is Kushina’s closest childhood friend.

The Uchiha boy blinks in surprise at the abrupt end to his fireball. Clearly, he’s also been underestimating his opponent.

Minato doesn't waste his momentary advantage, instead gathering a dense amount of chakra in his hands. 

Kushina realizes with a start that it’s wind chakra, same affinity as her. But instead of the massive amount Kushina prefers to gather to bowl her opponents over with, Minato is using a very small amount in a concentrated area.

The Uchiha boy doesn’t know what to do either, meaning this isn’t some typical Konoha jutsu. He tries to summon another fireball as Minato charges him, but he’s just too slow.

There’s a flash of light, and when Kushina’s eyes adjust, she sees a smoking crater where the ring once stood, the Uchiha boy knocked out cold in the center of it, Minato looking mildly concerned above him.

The match is called without hesitation.

 

\----

 

It’s been a week and a half since the second-round spars, and Kushina can make it official.

She hates the Chunin Exams with a burning passion.

Case in point, she’s been traversing the dense forests surrounding Konoha for five days now, and all she’s learned is that shampoo is a necessity.

The final round of the Chunin Exams is a stupid survival test, where she and the remaining Genin are expected to battle-royale their way through the forest to the finish line. The only hold up is that they can’t cross the finish line until a week has passed. 

Only the first twenty people over will be promoted to Chunin, the smallest amount since the very first year the Chunin Exams were implemented.

So now, two days are left, and Kushina and the other Genin are starting to get desperate.

Kushina has managed alright with her campsites and resource gathering, even enjoying her peaceful and quiet surroundings away from Konoha.

But she’s the only candidate out here from Uzushio, outnumbered by the other Genin that have allied themselves by now. They’re all older and bloodthirsty, desperate to prove their worth to their recovering villages.

Kushina is an easy target, more popular because of her blatant display in round two.

She’s already fended off three separate attacks, and she grows more exhausted and paranoid with each ambush.

The sun is starting to set behind the giant birch trees when Kushina hears a rustle of leaves.

It’s light-footed, and Kushina mistakes it for a rabbit until she hears a minor sniffle from the bushes it came from.

She draws out her senbon, growling out an aggressive, “Who’s there?!”

Slowly, the bushes part, and from out of the shadows and into the soft dappled sunlight, Minato’s sheepish face appears.

Kushina drops the senbon, rolling her eyes at the sight of her old friend. Minato may be a talented fighter, but a liar he is not. She knows he won’t try to betray her.

He runs a hand through his bright hair, a growing flush on his face.

“It’s been a little while…”

Kushina turns back to her measly fire.

“Yeah, Pineapple, it has.”

She hears his cautious footsteps besides her, and the rumple of leaves as he sits a few feet away. She pretends to ignore him, hoping that he’ll disappear back into the underbrush if she waits long enough.

“I was wondering if...uh...if we could stick together for the next two days?”

Minato’s voice drops off at the end of his question. 

Shy as ever, Kushina thinks with unexpected fondness.

“Why?” she intones blandly.

“Because I think we’re in similar situations, and it would be beneficial for us to team up. All the other Konoha Genin are older than me and didn't want to work together. You don’t seem to have any allies either,” he remarks casually, gesturing around her lonely campsite.

“What makes you think I need any help?’ Kushina replies angrily. She's so done with this bullshit attitude towards Kunoichi.

“No, no,” Minato objects nervously, “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I just think that we’d both have a better time if we worked together.”

A good time? 

In the so called ‘Forest of Death?’ 

Yeah, right.

But she feels a bit bad for Minato, still the genius outsider of her childhood.

“Fine,” she replies curtly. “But you have to do what I say, starting with collecting more kindling for this fire.”

Minato beams in response, brighter than the sun itself.

 

\----

 

Kushina is reluctant to admit it, but the last few days of the Chunin Exams are some of the most fun she’s had in her entire life.

Being with Minato is easy in a way Kushina isn’t used to. 

There’s no unspoken expectations or prying questions. He’s patient with her when she’s angry and frustrated, and cheerful when she’s sad.

And though Kushina always knew Minato was a great listener, she’s now learning what a great conversationalist he is too. No longer shy and quiet, Minato sounds like he’s popular back in Konoha—at least, he is among his fellow Genin.

She finds herself wanting to hear more of what he has to say, from his natural curiosity about the world around him, to his academic pursuits involving Shinobi history and chakra theory, and even his love for the village of Konoha and all the people within its walls.

And like a skilled lockpick, Minato slowly pries Kushina open over the next 48 hours. 

She lets him braid her hair after hours of begging. In return, she picks the twigs and leaves out of his hair in the morning.

She shows him how to weave fishing nets the way they do in Uzushio; He demonstrates the way that they build rabbit traps in Konoha.

They sketch seals together in the dirt of the campsite, critiquing each other’s work and offering suggestions for how to improve it.

(Kushina is glad to know that she’s still better at Fuinjutsu than Minato, at least)

It’s carefree and fun and Kushina starts smiling back when Minato grins, her face muscles cramping from disuse.

It’s a good kind of hurt.

 

\----

 

The last night before they are allowed to cross over to the finish line, Kushina sets a campfire for the best scavenged dinner ever.

They huddle together in the flickering firelight, trading jokes back and forth as they munch on well-cooked rabbit meat and overripe blackberries.

The conversation comes to a natural lull, the empty spaces filled by the sounds of the forest around them.

Minato heaves a deep breath out.

“I don’t want to spoil this moment, but this might be the last chance either of us will have alone together like this. I have to ask.”

Kushina looks up from the hypnotic movement of the flames, heart beating fast in fear for what Minato might want to ask.

“Are...are things okay back in Uzushio?” he says, voice soft and nervous.

Oh. 

Kushina’s been asked a lot of personal questions over the years, but no one’s bothered to ask her something like this.

People will conversationally say things like “are you okay”, but Kushina can always tell from their tone of voice that they don’t want to hear how she really feels, instead eager to move on to other useless small talk.

She must not respond quickly enough, because Minato adjusts his statement.

“I just mean, I heard about Mito-sama passing away, and you never came back to Konoha after that. All my letters got returned to me, so I wasn’t even sure if you lived in the same house.”

The house. Her parent’s house, cozy and cramped and warm. Lonely, suffocating with just kushina in it.

“I,” Minato stutters, completely devoid of his usual confidence, “I thought you might have died too. Until I saw you in the arena for the Chunin Exams. You were so different. Intimidating and hard, the way new veterans often are. I couldn’t help but wonder if something had happened to you, to see you change so drastically.”

Kushina swallows, her mouth impossibly dry.

“My parents died,” she says quickly. She finds the words don’t sting as much, not when she’s confiding to this boy and his honest, attentive eyes.

“During the war. They were combat medics. People like to tell me that I should be proud of their sacrifice, that they made the right decision. But it doesn’t make sense. How could it be selfless, when they were abandoning a little girl? How can people applaud their deaths and the things we lost in the war, when my own clan can’t even bother to take care of their orphaned family members?”

Minato doesn’t respond, his head pointed down towards the fire.

Kushina finds her face flushing, uncomfortable with her vulnerability.

“My dad died too. He was a civilian. But we had some lean years here with the war rationing. All it took was an uncured infection and a little malnourishment.”

Kushina thinks of Tsunade and every other Shinobi doctor, pulled away to fight on the front lines of war. She despairs for Minato and his father. If her parents could have been saved with one measly antibiotic, instead wasted on pointless violence, she never would have forgiven her village or Kage.

But here Minato is, bright and brilliant and so painfully optimistic.

The campfire crackles in front of her, drowning out the roaring she hears from her own demon-tainted soul.

“I have a monster inside me,” she confesses. 

She’s not supposed to tell people, for her safety and the safety of Uzushio. But everyone in her clan is in on this terrible secret, every Council Member, the Uzukage, the Hokage, even Tsunade.

So many unknown variables and near-strangers. One extra person won’t change all of that.

If she can't trust Minato than who can she trust?

 

\----

 

She wakes up the next morning, her limbs tangled with Minato’s.

He’s still asleep, his face so peaceful she feels envious. Night time is when the demon’s whispers are loudest.

But it’s understandable that he’s tired. After the bombshell she dropped last night, they were up till the early hours of the morning, her explaining and him listening.

She told him things even Tsunade didn’t know. The hate the demon feels, the rhythm of its thoughts. How in the rare moment when Kushina feels unfiltered, unadulterated rage, the demon is one second away from tearing through her skin, burning her body to ash and consuming her soul. 

Minato sits with a straight face through it all, neither fear nor pity contorting his features.

When Kushina finally finishes, tears running down her face and voice hoarse from talking, she feels a calm grip on her shoulder.

“You’re more than this,” Minato insists, his words so perfectly mirroring Mito’s.

He pulls her into a crushing hug, the smell of cedar and sweat making its way to her nose from his golden hair.

“You are not the demon,” he repeats over and over, a sick and twisted lullaby for Kushina’s freak-show of a life.

They fall asleep like that, two children entwined in a tender embrace.

But it’s morning now, and she and Minato have a finish line to cross.

She nudges him awake, ignoring the thumping in her chest when he lets out a big yawn, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter in an unfairly adorable way.

A few well-placed and aggressive pokes into Minato’s stomach have him up and ready to go. They don’t even bother to pack up their campsite, ready for this to be an all-out race to the finish.

As it turns out, they’re far more prepared for the final day than they thought they were, because they get within the finish line by noon, with no rival Genin in sight.

There are the sounds of faint spars a couple miles behind them, all the other competitors caught up in delaying each other. 

Kushina can see the finish marker looming above the trees of the forest, only 50 meters in front of them.

She takes a step forward, only to find her left hand being held back. She turns around to Minato, who’s now clutching her hand in his own, eyebrows arched up and mouth gaping open.

“This is it. This really is the last moment we might have together,” Minato says with disappointment in his face.

Kushina feels the same way, not that she’s going to tell him that.

“So it is, Pineapple,” she replies with an easy smirk. “Got anything you want to say?”

Minato is shaken out of his serious expression, chuckling at Kushina’s attitude. 

He glances around the forest, a contemplative silence settling over him. 

Kushina, as much as she enjoys seeing Minato fight and flail about, prefers him like this. At rest, perceptive with a wisdom far beyond his years. 

His serenity reminds her of nature; the pounding of rain on the ocean back in Uzushio, the babbling brook and forest behind Mito’s house.

He breaks the moment with a boyish grin aimed in Kushina’s direction.

“I think, _Habanero,_ that we should run away together.”

He gestures out at their surroundings before bringing his hands back to Kushina’s.

“We did alright in the forest these past few days. We could probably stay out here like this for a lot longer.”

“Oh?” Kushina plays along with this silly fantasy, “and what would we do for a living? What would we do for entertainment?”

“We’d hunt rabbits and catch fish and forage for berries,” Minato replies like it’s the easiest answer in the world. “We’d start a pebble collection and count the stars, and go bird watching and swimming on the weekends.”

“By the campfire, I’d tell ghost stories so scary you’d wet your pants in fear,” Kushina adds with a mean glint in her eye.

Minato laughs at that, a joyful, freeing sound.

“We could turn around right now, and never look back. No one would be able to find us if we didn’t want them to.” 

He’s looking at her with such an earnest, naive expression on his face.

It strikes her then and there if she asked him, Minato would go through with this silly plan. He’d willingly throw away his bright future, his years of hard work, everything waiting for him back in Konoha, just to waste the rest of his days away with her.

She remembers why she ended their friendship all those years ago. 

He’s too remarkable for her to keep to herself. She doesn’t deserve something as good as Namikaze Minato.

“I think,” she responds slowly, dragging out the words, “that I would start to miss Uzushio. And you would miss Konoha.”

Minato nods, something like disappointment stretched across his fair features.

“But,” Kushina adds, “there’s one last thing we can do before we cross the finish line.”

She’s thought about this a lot in the past two weeks, from the moment she saw Minato enter the arena, confident and powerful. She thinks of him at age eight, nervous and awkward, but so, so kind. He’s changed so much, but all the important things stayed the same.

His face, too, has changed. His hair is cropped shorter, well-brushed and soft in the sunlight. His eyes are still that ocean blue, his nose long and regal, a smile so infectious Kushina can’t help but grin back.

She hasn’t had a crush on someone before. She isn’t sure what it’s supposed to feel like, but she thinks the way she keeps staring at his long, wiry limbs, indicative of how tall he’ll grow up to be, is rather indicative of how she feels.

Minato was right. This is possibly their last chance to be alone together, before Shinobi duties tear them apart. She might as well make the most of it.

So, Kushina leans forward and kisses him.

It’s as awkward as any first kiss, their noses smashing together too harshly, lips not quite lining up. 

But because it’s Minato she’s kissing, Kushina finds she doesn’t mind too much. From the way Minato is clutching onto her right hand, she can tell he feels the same.

After a few seconds, she pulls away. There’s only one thing left to do now.

She leans into Minato’s ear to whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

Then, before he can react with his lightning quick reflexes, she’s binding his arms and legs with her chakra chains.

She sprints off before he can open his big mouth to try to convince her to let him go.

She’ll drop the chains once she’s closer to the finish line. 

Because even though they were working together, Kushina hadn’t forgotten the purpose of the Chunin Exams.

It’s a competition, a way for the Hidden Villages to show off their next generation of Shinobi.

And Kushina didn’t come here for anything less than first, not when she’s from somewhere as tiny as Uzushio. She’ll let Minato settle for second place—at least he gets Kushina’s renewed friendship out of the deal.

As she crosses the border, she drops the chains holding her friend in place.

He approaches impossibly fast, no more than a yellow blur amongst the lovely Konoha greenery.

Once he crosses the finish line, Minato halts.

He ignores all the spectating Jounin and Genin, even his own Hokage, as he turns towards Kushina.

“Fuck you, Habanero!” He whines, the corners of his mouth turned up in amusement.

Kushina doesn’t play along this time.

“Write to me when I return to Uzushio,” she demands with complete seriousness. 

“I’ll write back to you this time around, _Pineapple._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I spend more time messily editing than writing. Oh well. I'm thinking I'm a bit of a quantity over quality type of writer :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing is 10k words. My bad.

On a warm Thursday in June, Kushina makes her way to the Uzukage’s office. 

At age nineteen, her chubby cheeks from childhood have melted away into sharp cheekbones that offset the lovely round shape of her face and her delicate and feminine snub nose. She is not very tall or slender, but her presence more than makes up for it. 

When she walks down the street, whispers follow her, the same as they always have.

But they don’t refer to her as ‘Mito-sama’s pupil’ or the ‘Uzumaki orphan’ anymore. No, she is regarded as the most promising young Shinobi in Uzushio, well on her way to surpassing the Uzukage. She’s got one of the strongest chakra signatures in the village, a brilliant purple hue that gathers in the very air around her when she performs jutsu. She has inherited the Uzumaki bloodline limit and employs it tactfully and sparingly in a way most of her relatives cannot. She is a master of Fuinjutsu, her academic knowledge only rivaled by the stuffy civilian scholars of the Central Library, her practical knowledge unparalleled. She’s beautiful too, or so villagers and visitors alike say. Wise-gray eyes and straight scarlet hair that cascades down her back in an open taunt to any who would touch it. Her natural leadership and easy confidence would lead an outside spectator believe she was next in line as Clan Head, but that honor instead belongs to her distant red headed cousins. It’s perfectly fine, because Kushina is destined for better things—becoming the Yondaime Uzukage among them. 

So here she is, dressed in a clean-pressed Jounin uniform and polished forehead protector, eager for an assignment to prove all the rumors true.

There are rumors of another war brewing to the Northwest. Clashes on the ever-weakening borders of the five great Hidden Villages, and thinly threats between Konoha and Iwa.

They’re already calling it the Third Great Shinobi War.

Kushina grew up in the shadow of war. She knows what it costs, despises it with every ounce of her being.

But she is also a person with ambitions. Today the Uzukage will assign her to a soldier’s post—probably auxiliary troops for Konoha, as second-in-command due to her inexperience. She is not fully battle-tested, and this will be her opportunity to prove herself. It’s the best chance for career advancement Kushina might ever have, and she intends to seize it by the horns.

So, technically speaking, Kushina is planning on profiting off of the war.

 

\----

 

Her conscience reels back at the idea, flashing memories of her parents’ tired eyes, of Tsunade’s tear-stained face, of Mito’s unsteady voice as she recounted the legend of the Tailed-Beasts.

Another part of Kushina, something more ancient, more evil, growls in anticipation of the bloodshed.

 

\----

 

She walks down a familiar dirt path with one-hundred of her clansmen and fellow Shinobi. 

Most are young, recently promoted Jounin like her, but the leaders of the squadron are Clan Heads and distant uncles, now with families of their own back home waiting for them. There’s a stark contrast between the two groups of people—one overly-enthusiastic and foolish, the other embittered and exhausted.

To make matters worse, almost all of the Uzushio contingent will be separated, each person filling a support role on different Konoha squads.

From a purely logistical standpoint it makes sense. Uzushio produces some of the finest chakra sensors and medic-nin across the Shinobi world, with their tradition and mastery of Fuinjutsu. An Uzushio Shinobi tacked onto the typical Konoha squad looks great on paper. It will fill in the gaps of a Konoha team and offer protection for the Uzushio soldiers who aren’t as masterful at Taijutsu and Genjutsu.

But in practice, this plan won’t work so well. Kushina and her cohort have grown up working together. They’ve hammered out a method of teamwork, a certain rapport that makes them a lot stronger together than apart. They know what to expect from each other. She’s sure the same goes for the Konoha Shinobi, who will be reluctant to accommodate for outsiders. 

Kushina wonders how many of her fellow Shinobi will fall in battle because of petty trust issues and perceived cultural differences.

She hopes that her Commanding Officer will at least try to welcome her. 

As they get nearer and nearer to the village, those oh-so-familiar gates loom above the trees.

Kushina hasn’t actually been back to Konoha since the Chunin Exams, but she likes to consider herself relatively up to date on what’s happening in the Hidden Leaf.

The trunk full of letters postmarked with a Konoha address back home in Uzushio can attest to that.

She’s sure that every twelve-year-old dreams of a pen pal as attentive as Minato. 

Minato, who hasn’t seen her in seven years.

It doesn’t matter to either of them, not when they send five letters back and forth a month. Not when Minato knows every awful secret about her. Not when his chicken scratch handwriting confesses I feel like you understand me more than anyone else in the world.

Kushina can’t help but feel the same way.

She hopes she’ll have a chance to see him among the fair-skinned and green-vested Shinobi of Konoha. 

He’ll be the only familiar face to her here, Tsunade long gone and freed of her obligations to the village.

It’s another story Kushina heard about from written letters, far more infrequent and never stamped with the same location twice.

It seems war took more from Tsunade than Kushina initially thought. It makes sense in a warped sort of way. A soldier sees more death than any other occupation, a doctor even more so.

The old engagement ring came in the mail when Kushina was fourteen, an untold story of loss and grief Tsunade had been bottling up for years until the dam finally broke.

She wrote in old-fashioned cursive, every few words switching into the Uzushio dialect Mito taught her.

_I’m finally learning to let go_ , she wrote in her first note.

_I’m entrusting the ring to you for safekeeping, otherwise I might gamble it away,_ , she wrote a few years later.

No, it’s certain that Tsunade will not be in Konoha now. Anyone hoping the greatest of the three Sanin will return to serve in the Third Shinobi War is fooling themselves.

 

\----

 

They’re all waiting outside the Hokage Tower, which is located on one of the highest points in the city limits. The Hokage Monument looms behind it, the downtown area and shopping district below on the other end.

It not so much a tower as a whole cluster of buildings, bustling with the sounds of bureaucracy and the Shinobi Industrial Complex.

Inside, their supervising officers are collecting the assignment scrolls. Over half of the Uzushio forces have been picked up already, on their merry way to meet the rest of their teams for ‘bonding exercises’, otherwise known as bar-hopping.

There is a commotion at the door, and ten Konoha Jounin step out.

The area bursts into chaos as they call out the names of their subordinates, the Uzushio Shinobi calling right back.

Kushina pushes through the throng of people, hoping to get a better view, when she stumbles into someone tall and sturdy.

As her eyes rove up their vest, she prepares to give them a verbal lashing for not looking where there going.

But instead of a disgruntled Konoha Shinobi, there’s a boyish grin waiting for Kushina.

Blue eyes the color of the ocean back home, and hair like sunlight on a too familiar face.

“Minato?!” She chokes out in surprise and poorly masked excitement.

There is no response back, only the sensation of being crushed into a hug with someone far larger in height and muscle mass than herself.

She leans in without thinking about it, enveloped in childhood memories and his cedar-sweat scent.

Then, Kushina’s brain comes rushing back to her, and she pushes herself away from him. This sort of public display of affection can reflect badly on her, if word gets back to Uzushio.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, trying to ignore the faint feeling of disappointment in her stomach as she extricates herself from his arms.

He unfurls the scroll in his hands with something like pride. At the bottom, beneath all the office worker jargon, is a name printed in heavy black ink: Uzumaki Kushina.

“You’re my partner!” Minato says simply, like that answers every question Kushina has.

Before she can parse through her feelings on the unexpected assignment, Minato is grabbing her hand in his free one.

“Let’s go somewhere less crowded to talk,” he whispers, eyes scanning the busy plaza around them.

And then there’s a flash of light, and Kushina’s stomach feels like it’s trying to escape through her mouth.

 

\----

 

Her eyes flash open on a quiet little side street, the Hokage Tower imposing and distant on the hill above them.

_Did Minato just teleport them?_

As if reading her thought, Minato speaks up.

“It’s called the Hiraishin, a technique of my own invention,” he says far too smugly.

“But we can talk about that later when we meet the rest of the team.”

Kushina blinks once, then twice.

She snatches the scroll from his hands, scanning it over to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

Her heart is thumping loudly in her chest, traitorous organ that it is. Her brain is working overtime in damage control, trying to understand how this situation could have possibly come about.

“The day I found out we were getting auxiliary troops,” Minato explains, “I went straight to the Hokage’s office to request your name.”

The blood rushes to her ears as she comprehends his words.

“You made this happen?” Kushina yells.

She doesn’t notice how Minato's face falls, too absorbed in her own anger at the assignment.

“This is completely unprofessional! Neither the elders of Konoha nor Uzushio have forgotten our little stunt at the Chunin Exams. At best they’ll assume its favoritism, and at worst, treason!”

“Kushina,” Minato tries placatingly, “with your status—”

“My status isn’t a fucking heart-condition, Minato,” Kushina corrects, eyes dangerously narrow. She’s not surprised that being a Jinchuuriki affected her assignment.

“With your position,” he amends, “the selection was limited to Jounin-senseis. I figured we’d work best on two-man missions.”

_Jounin-Senseis? Two-man teams? What the hell is this?_

Minato shuffles his feet awkwardly.

“I have a Genin team. Obviously they won’t come with us on the more dangerous missions but—”

“A Genin team?” Kushina snaps.

The mere suggestion of child soldiers is unforgivable. On a battlefield, those kids will be nothing but human shields. A body count statistic. Tsunade’s little brother, who Kushina never even had a chance to meet.

She almost can’t stomach the thought. 

“Konoha is already willing to use child soldiers?” she questions in a cold, hard voice. “The war hasn’t even started yet.”

Minato, for once, looks serious.

“I know it’s wrong,” he says with complete sincerity. “But they’re right about the severity of the war. It’s going to be bad. Maybe even worse than the second.”

Kushina blanches. This wasn’t what she expected when she volunteered to come here.

“Kushina,” Minato says, blue eyes pleading, “The Fire Daimyo himself wouldn’t hesitate to sign their lives away, even if he knew them personally. No one cares about them as casualties. I’m the only one that can protect these kids. It’s up to me to teach them to be strong, to be better than this system.”

He looks at her with such desperation and hope.

“But I can’t do it alone.”

He clutches her hands like a lifeline.

“Will you help me?”

There’s only one answer Kushina can give.

 

\----

 

His team is waiting for them at a family-run little ramen stand in the midst of the shopping district.

Ichiraku, Kushina thinks it’s called. Minato took her here once, when they were both young.

As they approach the shop, they hear a commotion.

A boy dressed in navy blues and orange runs towards them, screaming something.

“Sensei,” he wails from across the street, “tell Bakashi he’s being an asshole!”

Minato’s face is pleasantly amused, like these sorts of interactions are typical for his Genin team.

“Why don’t you sit back down, and we can talk about this inside once we order dinner,” he says, infuriatingly patient to even Kushina.

The boy immediately obeys, clearly itching for his teacher’s approval. They follow him inside and sit down, where the loud boy and his two teammates are waiting.

Minato introduces them first, as if they aren’t twelve years old and perfectly capable of talking to adults. The kids don’t seem to mind too much, the way Kushina would have at their age.

There’s Uchiha Obito, the boy greeted them when they first came in. He’s not at all what Kushina would expect from an Uchiha, with his loud and goofy personality. Still, she’s charmed by his mismatched clothes and too-big goggles. On a good day, Kushina acted very similarly as a child.

The Genin sitting next to Obito is Nohara Rin, probably the most normal of the bunch. She’s got some minor clan markings on her cheeks, and a relatively small chakra signature. She’s sweet and friendly, and definitely the voice of reason on their little team. But when she speaks, she’s got this quiet authority to her voice that reminds Kushina of Minato. Give it a few years and she’ll be a powerful Kunoichi, if her admiration of ‘Tsunade-sama’ is anything to go by.

The last of the bunch, sitting on Rin’s other side, is the so-called Bakashi, AKA Hatake Kakashi. There’s something not quite right with the kid, and Kushina doesn't mean the ash-white hair poking up from his head or the cloth mask that obscures all but his eyes. He sits with unnatural stillness, with a chakra force too refined for a mere twelve-year-old. He nods once to Kushina but doesn’t say much else, and Kushina wonders what happened to him to have brought him to this place.

The similarities between him and a certain redheaded Jinchuuriki orphan are uncomfortably close. 

The conversation draws to a lull once Minato has finished his introductions.

“So who is she?” Kakashi asks, a pointed glance in Kushina’s direction.

Kushina can see Minato open his mouth to respond.

“I’m Uzumaki Kushina,” she interrupts preemptively, because she is a grown woman who can introduce herself, _thank you very much._

“I haven’t seen you around town before,” Obito says, his wide, dark eyes narrowing in suspicion. 

“Because she’s from Uzushio, idiot,” Kakashi corrects in a bored tone, “Can’t you recognize the symbol from her forehead projector?”

Rin frowns, pushing the two boys apart. She turns towards Kushina, picture perfect posture and a big smile on her face.

“What are you doing here in Konoha? Is it your first time here? How do you like it?” 

Kushina laughs at the barrage of questions. She remembers the first time she met Mito, how curious she was at the mysterious older woman. It seems like kids never change. 

“Well,” she says with a glance in Minato’s direction, “I’m here to train with your team. Or, to be more accurate, I’m here to help Minato-sensei train you.”

Even though Kakashi’s face is hidden under a mask, she can see how he frowns at the demeaning remark. She’ll have to ask Minato about him later.

“No way that you’re as strong as Sensei!” Obito screeches, oblivious to his teammate’s frustration. If Obito’s hero-worship is anything to go by, Minato must be a good teacher, an amazing Jounin, or possibly even both.

“I am,” she responds with absolute sincerity.

“In fact, Minato and I have been friends since we were younger than you kids. I remember it like it was just yesterday.”

She speaks dramatically, like she’s reading a story to a young child. It seems to work, because all three Genin have their eyes trained on her. Beside her, she can see Minato’s fair skin flushing red in embarrassment. 

“I used to come to Konoha in the summers. Back home in Uzushio, we call the months of July, August, and September monsoon season, because storms often rage on the tropical seas that far to the southeast. It was wonderful to be able to come to Konoha, where it was sunny and mild day after day. I met Minato here, and from that first meeting, he was my faithful sidekick. During the school day, we’d prank all our teachers and classmates, not that we were ever caught. After class, we’d run around the forests behind my great aunt's house. It was a good childhood.”

“Why did your great aunt live in Konoha?” asks Rin.

“Because she helped found it,” Kushina replies, like it’s the clearest thing in the whole world.

There’s a pair of small hands slamming down on the table, rattling the now empty ramen bowls. Kakashi is looking at her in surprise and awe.

“Your great aunt was Uzumaki Mito?”

“Yup,” she says, popping the ‘p’ at the end for emphasis. “The Uzumaki are quite a big clan. In fact, I’d say we’re larger than even the Uchiha.” She gives the emblem on Obito’s shirt a playful poke, amused with how these kids are practically eating out of her hands now.

It seems like Rin knows her Konoha family trees very well, because the next question aimed at Kushina is “Did you ever meet Senju Tsunade?” 

“I did. She used to help me with my Taijutsu when I was younger.”

All three kids are completely focused on her now, reverence in their eyes for the near stranger before them.

For the rest of the night, Kushina fields questions from them with an easy confidence and joy she hasn’t felt since she was much, much younger and far more naive.

Minato is content to sit back and enjoy the show, until it gets late enough that he excuses them from the table, dismissing his students for the evening. They’re going to meet up at Training Ground 13 the next day, where Kushina can evaluate their skills.

Once the Genin’s tiny silhouettes have disappeared down the lamplit street, Minato and Kushina head towards the soldier’s barracks, where Kushina and the rest of the Uzushio soldiers will be staying until they are sent out on missions.

They don’t say much on that walk back, perfectly content to bask in each other’s presence. When they get to the end of the cobblestone street, Kushina turns around to wave goodbye to Minato. He graces her with a gentle smile and soft words, before flashing away.

When she lays in bed that night, she lays a shaky hand on her lips, imagining how it would have felt for Minato to give her a goodnight kiss. She shoves the thought away, dismissing it as unprofessional and childish.

But since when has the human heart listened to logic?

 

\----

 

The next day goes by in a rush, and Kushina finds herself on some random rooftop at sunset, debriefing with Minato.

She is sure, now more than ever, that Konoha can’t send these kids to war.

For all that Minato is kind and patient and knowledgeable, his team is completely dysfunctional.

In fact, the only part of the formula that works is Rin, who both supportive but fiercely competent. She’s smart in a textbook sort of way, and with a few more years of intensive Taijutsu practice, could make Medic Jounin easily. But for now, she is a mildly capable Genin, with no special clan techniques to set her apart on the field.

No, the problem stems from the relationship between Kakashi and Obito, or the lack thereof.

Obito, for every bit that he may be an Uchiha, has inherited none of their talent or poise. He stumbles around the field, clumsy in chakra control and bodily movement. He’s loud and impulsive and everything a ninja should not be. He hasn’t even awoken his Sharingan, the protective goggles he wears merely a childish whimsy. She wonders aloud if talent skips a generation in Konoha’s most powerful clan, until Minato explains. 

It seems that Obito drew the short end of the stick in Shinobi society, because he is both a bastard and an orphan in a clan more suffocating than even the Uzumaki. She understands his lack of talent now, growing up a social outcast without anyone to check after him, the constant pressure of his family weighing on his too-young shoulders. It would take months to get Obito caught up with his peers, without the aid of an instant teaching tool like the Sharingan.

Fortunately, he’s a kinetic learner in the hands of two phenomenal teachers. Minato is fantastically perceptive and analytical. Every minor change he makes in Obito’s posture causes instantaneous changes. And as for Kushina—well, if she can't teach the boy chakra theory, no one in the entire world can, save for Senju Tsunade.

Kakashi seems like he might be an even bigger problem than Obito. If Rin is textbook in knowledge, Kakashi is textbook in performance. He’s a natural prodigy, eerily reminiscent to Minato in skill, if nothing else. And unsurprisingly, he’s actually a Chunin. Graduated the Academy at age six, apparently, which makes Kushina sick to her stomach. She hates this system, how it allows children so young to commit the rest of their life to being a Shinobi. The war on the horizon explains why he was promoted so quickly.

But he’s an absolute brat, incapable of even the slightest teamwork. Kushina knows bullies, and though Kakashi may not be one, the way he treats Obito is cruel and unfair. He barely acknowledges Rin, either. Kushina isn’t sure how to approach bad behavior besides beating it out of someone, but she can't just do that to children, especially when they’re not her own Genin.

Minato is equally flummoxed on how to solve the issue, because Kakashi’s problems stem from a deeper place than rude manners. 

And Minato proceeds to tell her a story of one Hatake Sakumo, famed warrior of Konoha during the Second Shinobi War, until he failed a vital mission that could have shortened the war by two years. He chose to save his comrades instead, and when he returned to the village, he was shunned and hated, even by those he rescued. 

He was Kakashi’s own father, the two of them social pariahs. Kakashi was too young to truly understand, instead dawning a mask so people didn’t recognize him as a carbon copy of his disgraced parent. 

And for all that Sakumo might have loved Kakashi, he hated himself far more. 

He committed suicide when Kakashi was seven years old, and young Kakashi was the one to find the body one day after successfully returning from his first mission. 

The body had already been decomposing for two days, and authorities didn’t find it till the third, when they came to check on Kakashi, who hadn’t delivered his mission report.

They found him there in shock, tucked under his father’s stiff arms, oblivious to the now-dried blood, buzzing flies, and putrid scent in the small kitchen.

They tried to send him to therapy, but it didn’t stick. In fact, the only thing that stuck in Kakashi's head was the desperate desire to be the perfect Shinobi and to follow the ninja code perfectly, as if that would ever bring his father back.

Now at age twelve, Minato is the closest thing Kakashi has to an authority figure in his own life, after being assigned as the boy’s mentor a few years ago. The rest of the Genin team is there to fill in the gaps.

Minato blue eyes grow watery at this point, so unsure and concerned for Kakashi’s future. Kushina hates to see him so distraught.

She sets a firm hand on his shoulder, staring him dead in the eyes.

Being here in Konoha beside Minato, Kushina can remember a time she wasn’t so cold and aloof. She’s only been here for two days, but she can already feel herself growing more open and friendlier, a better person to be around—the kind of leader Uzushio might want one day. 

Staring at Kakashi is like looking into a mirror. It’s taken her a long time to realize how ugly her reflection truly is. 

“I will help him,” she says, determined.

She will not let another orphan grow up the way she did.

With a lesson plan set in place for Minato’s Genin, she walks him back to his small apartment on the west side of Konoha.

His doorstop is small, pressing the two of them close together. Kushina wishes him a goodnight with a noogie and a too-loud voice.

This is not the time or place for shy and stolen kisses.

 

\----

 

The next day they find themselves at Training Ground 13 again, this time for a demonstration spar.

Kushina cracks her knuckles in eagerness, her own bloodlust outweighing the low-level amount she constantly feels from the Nine-Tails.

She has not fought with Minato since they were both nine.

Now, both as fully-fledged Jounin nearing the prime of their careers, they will get to spar again.

She is excited to see how he has advanced, his strange teleportation trick from the other day sure to make an appearance.

She’s even more excited to show off her own skills, both for the man across the clearing and for the three children sitting before them.

They bow respectfully, and Kushina throws in a flirtatious wink for the hell of it, like when they were children and her biggest pleasure was throwing Minato off his guard. It works, from the way his jaw drops and eyebrows raise in response.

Obito is in charge of counting them off, his voice squeaky and rushed with a “threetwooneGO!”

Neither of the adults care, with how they are instantly racing at each other.

Minato comes at her quickly, but Kushina’s ready for it, chakra gathering into her fingertips for an explosive and teasing flick to his forehead.

He goes flying back, but lands on his feet, thanks to some well-placed and nimble flips.

His now-dented forehead protected glints under the morning sun, and Kushina knows she will not land another hit that clean for the rest of the fight.

She’ll have to rely on her Ninjutsu and Fuinjutsu instead.

From across the field, Minato disappears into a flash of golden light. Before Kushina can react, there is a presence behind her.

She turns, just fast enough to see that glowing ball of wind chakra Minato used at the Chunin Exams gathered in his hands, smaller and brighter than she remembers.

She only has a heartbeat to gather chakra towards her midriff, where Minato slams the ball into her. 

Kushina is thrown backwards, the same direction she sent Minato flying only seconds before. She manages to land cleanly, if with a little less panache than her opponent.

There’s a faint throbbing where she was hit, and Kushina knows that she needs to put a stop to that annoying teleportation jutsu before it can surprise her again.

What she needs is to stall. 

Thank goodness words have so much power.

“I’m beginning to get annoyed with that little flashing trick, Minato,” she drawls out. “As an Uzumaki, it’s almost offensive that you don’t share such amazing seals with me.”

Minato smiles back, shit-eating grin on his face. 

“You’ll just have to figure it out yourself. I’m sure it’ll be a piece of cake for a Fuinjutsu master like yourself.”

_Bingo._

Minato may not know it, but he’s just confirmed some very important information for Kushina, starting with the fact that his teleportation technique is actually Fuinjutsu, and not some well-crafted illusion or previously unknown bloodline limit.

Intuition tells her it’s marked on her body, so Kushina thinks back to when she and Minato first rushed at each other, and how it might have gotten on her. She remembers a faint tap on her arms seconds before she hit him.

Sure enough, looking down onto her bicep, Kushina spots an unfamiliar seal.

She already has a pen in hand, drawing a basic seal nullifier over the symbol.

It should stop Minato from tagging her again or using the current one.

She looks back up, waving a hand at her opponent.

“Looks like I did figure it out! Thanks for believing in me.”

Minato throws his head into his hands as the Genin laugh.

Kushina isn’t prideful enough to think she’s won the battle yet though, because without his teleportation jutsu, Minato is still dangerous. 

Case in point, he rips through a set of seals with natural ease, and a ten-foot tall water dragon is rising above Kushina almost instantly.

She’s a quick thinker, flashing through her own signals. A steady earth barrier rises in front of her, the dragon crashing uselessly against it.

One blink of an eye later, and she and Minato are flashing through identical seals. They hurl the same high-level wind jutsu at each other, the two mighty gusts cancelling out in the space between them. There’s a great cracking noise as they hit, before they wink out of existence.

They’re almost perfectly matched, both with a natural affinity for wind. If Kushina was any other person, she might swoon at the coincidence, calling it fate or destiny or something equally silly.

But Kushina is not anyone else, so instead she flashes through another set of hand signals. 

She knows Minato will try some other high-level wind jutsu—one she will not know, because she doesn’t have his patience for academia or near perfect memory.

But Kushina has other talents at hand.

Her hands lock into place at the same time as Minato’s, but when he sends out wind, she sends out a brilliant rush of fire, so hot that it looks more white than orange.

It snuffs out Minato’s jutsu, forcing him to jump back to avoid having his eyebrows singed off.

When the heat clears, he gawks at Kushina.

“Where did you learn fire jutsu?” he nearly screeches.

Kushina smirks back, a quick flip of her hair to dismiss his question.

The truth of the matter is that very few Shinobi ever manage to master any chakra elements past their own. She and Minato are exceptions with their proficiency in earth and water, respectively.

The fire is not really Kushina’s. It’s the chakra affinity of the demon inside her, whose anger simmers slowly, waiting to be released for the day it can burn the whole world down. If she’s going to be stuck as a Jinchuuriki, Kushina might as well reap the benefits of the job. If that includes stealing skills from an ancient and evil monster, then so be it.

But enough on that.

This fight is going nowhere really fast. Minato and Kushina can spend all day throwing ridiculous jutsu at each without any progress on either side. If Kushina tries to engage in hand-to-hand, Minato might easily overpower with his speed.

It seems like an appropriate time to pull out her ace-in-the-hole.

Kushina calls upon the natural gifts of her family, the jutsu sliding into place easily, Mito’s voice in her ears.

The familiar and luminescent glow of her purple chains wraps around Minato’s left foot, and…

And…

And Minato steps away faster than the Kushina’s trained eyes can see it.

_What the hell?_

She’s so shocked that she calls out to Minato.

“That’s never happened to me before.”

He laughs at her.

“Would you believe me if I told you I’ve spent years training for this exact situation?” he says, a sheepish hand on the back of his neck.

She does believe it. Minato is the type of nerd that would pour excessive time and energy into beating a childhood friend. 

It’s wonderfully petty.

And kind of flattering.

She finds herself blushing a little bit, not that it’s visible to Minato from so far away.

“How kind,” she replies, “but I’ll take the blame on that one. I should’ve known I couldn’t rely on a little party trick to beat you.”

And then she rushes him, unprepared for whatever an all-out Taijutsu match might bring. Minato charges at her in turn.

The fighting might be dragging on for an hour, or it might be for a mere five minutes. Kushina has no clue, only that she is utterly engrossed in her opponent, his speed against her endurance. Neither lands too many blows, but when they do, they’re hard and fast, the recovery even faster. She falls into a sort of trance, letting her body instinctively fall into the rhythm of the fight. They’re perfectly matched, their bodies slotting together like a strange and violent sort of dance. It’s exhilarating.

But it can only end one way.

She and Minato freeze, senbon and kunai pressed to each other’s throats in an intimate position. 

They breathe heavily, the cool metal of the weapons touching skin on every exhale. 

She stares into his too-blue eyes, reminded of the hypnotic waves crashing against rocks back home. He stares back, transfixed by something beyond Kushina’s comprehension.

They are statues, balanced precariously between aggression and attraction. One wrong move and they’ll either be ripping out each other’s throats. 

Or ripping off each other’s clothes.

The silence is shattered by loud cheering from the sidelines.

Three small children run up.

“That was amazing!” Obito shrieks in joy.

“You have to tell me how you figured out Sensei’s Hiraishin!” Rin gushes.

“I’ve never seen a fighting style like yours,” Kakashi confesses.

Minato is first to respond, a dorky expression on his face.

“Geez, guys, let us old folks catch our breath for a moment before you ask us to teach you everything.”

The kids whine in protest, and Minato laughs at their antics.

“If I had known all it took to inspire you was Kushina, I would’ve asked her to come to Konoha months ago!” Minato throws a wink in Kushina’s direction.

He’s definitely close enough now to see how her face turns the same shade as her hair.

 

\----

 

After that, training goes along fantastically.

Obito blossoms under Kushina’s careful eye, throwing himself into each kata warm-up and exercise drill with unparalleled enthusiasm.

Rin is attentive as usual, growing a bit bolder as Kushina channels her inner-Tsunade to bark at the girl.

Even Kakashi warms up to Kushina, too busy with sparring to mock Obito. Before he leaves for the day, he thanks Kushina with a quick nod.

That leaves Minato and Kushina alone.

“They’re great kids,” she says, surprised at how much she means it. She probably won’t ever have a Genin team of her own—by the time this war is over, she’ll have been promoted too far up the ladder to have time for training little brats of her own. Still, it’s nice to live vicariously through Minato. All the fun and none of the responsibilities.

“Yeah,” Minato replies, eyes still gazing at the road they left on. “I’ve only had them for a few months, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve come to care for them.”

Kushina hums in agreement, sensing that Minato isn’t done talking.

“I’m scared for this war, Kushina,” he says, turning towards her. “I’m scared that the kids won’t make it out alive. I’m scared for every child that’s going to fight in this war.”

It’s strange to hear her own thoughts voiced by Minato. Kushina has been grappling with the same problem for the past couple of days herself. Somehow, it’s weirdly assuring that Minato is in the same boat as her.

She decides to break the silence.

“I know.”

Minato grabs her hand, giving it a firm squeeze. 

_I’m here_ , he seems to say.

“The only thing we can do is train them for the day we won’t protect them,” he says solemnly, like it’s not enough.

And it isn’t enough.

But there’s no instant fix for war, no way to stop the Hidden Villages from sending children to their deaths. 

It’s strikingly similar to something Mito-sama once said, Kushina realizes with a start.

“There is something we can do,” she says, tone low and serious.

“We can survive this war. And we can work our way up the chain of command, until we’re the Kages of our villages. And from there, we can make sure that this sort of tragedy never happens again.”

Minato looks up at that. Slowly, his eyes brighten up, a familiar look of hopefulness across his features.

That’s better—pessimism has never suited Minato.

They sit there together for a while, contemplating their futures and envisioning a world where war won’t exist.

The sun has long since set, and the evening breeze carries an autumn chill. 

The night is still young, though. Kushina thinks of the events of today, and yesterday, and the day before that. 

Minato was a distant thought before she returned to Konoha. A childhood friend and longtime pen pal. But that’s the thing—he always stayed some distant voice over letters. She hadn’t seen him since she was thirteen. Since the Chunin Exams. Since their first kiss.

He’s the same in all the ways that matter, something stable and consistent in Kushina’s whirlwind of a life. Smart, funny, and kind.

Not to mention handsome as hell. Fully grown into his tall and slender frame, muscles built up from a lifetime of being a Shinobi. His hair is a bit longer now, but still every bit as bright as the day she first met him on the Academy playground. He’s grown into his long nose and gently arched eyebrows, his skin fair but weathered from frequent travel. There’s his smile, magnetic as always. And lastly there’s his eyes, narrow and wide, a deep blue underneath. Eyes that remind her of the ocean back home. 

It’s silly to pretend that she’s not hopelessly attracted to him now, sillier still to ignore the situation altogether. 

He’s one of the last bits of good left in her world. She wants to covet him, wrap him in her arms and never let go, the way she let go of her parents and Mito and Tsunade and her own soul.

She wants him, _damn the consequences._

Minato turns to Kushina, a question on the tip of his tongue. 

Kushina beats him to it.

“Want to get a drink?” she asks with her usual confidence.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Minato replies.

Together they set off down the road to the shopping district, a perfect picture of two young lovers.

 

\----

 

The next month leaves Kushina deliriously happy, her days spent training Minato’s Genin, her nights spent out on the town with Minato, meeting his fellow Jounin and rekindling her love for Konoha.

Of course, the peace can’t last forever.

Minato comes to her early one morning, a mission scroll from the Hokage in his hand. 

They’re being sent out to destroy one of Iwa’s trade routes, a frequent wartime tactic the villages use.

It’s not a front lines battle, not yet, but Kushina would bet good money there will be an Iwa protection detail waiting near their destination. A skirmish of some sort is almost guaranteed.

Still, orders are orders, so Kushina, Minato, Obito, Kakashi, and Rin set out early the next day.

The kids are all excited for the mission, even Kakashi, whose pace is a little faster than usual.

It’s understandable. They’ve never been on an official mission outside the village in this context—they see it as something utterly serious, a way to truly help their village besides easy chores and manual labor.

Kushina just wishes it wasn’t in the midst of a war, when tensions are so high and Shinobi so bloodthirsty.

She’s prepared for the worst, carrying a pack full of preloaded seals.

With Minato’s permission, she’s given each of the kids their own barrier jutsu tag. It’s the kind of thing that Genin back in Uzushio learn. Not very powerful but easy to manage and useful in a pinch. Kushina hopes and prays it will be enough to protect them, should things go sour.

 

\----

 

And boy do things go sour.

The trade route, as it turns out, spans many trails across an entire forest, and in order to complete the mission in a timely manner before anyone catches them, they need to split up.

Kushina takes Obito, and Minato takes Kakashi and RIn.

Of course both groups are ambushed by a party of Iwa scouts.

Of course they get ahold of Obito before he can run away or hide, and of course they use him as leverage against Kushina. 

The image of him there, so small and scared in a giant man’s arms, kunai pressed into his throat, burns into the back Kushina’s eyeballs.

There’s the roaring of the Nine-Tails in her ears, her own anger rising up to meet it, and without thinking about it, she’s aiming two senbon at the man’s eyes.

She hits home, his grunt of pain the only way to tell what just happened. He drops Obito in surprise, and Kushina dashes forward to finish the Shinobi off.

She sinks more senbon into his skin, this time meant to paralyze permanently, and she’s turning around to face his two accomplices.

One of them has dragged Obito off, a bead of red at the boy's throat from another kunai.

She summons her chakra chains, wrapping them around the person’s limbs.

She’s never done this before but it barely matters—not when she’s seeing red.

The chains fasten around their limbs. With a sharp tug, the chains go pulling in either direction, and there’s a mighty tear as their arms and legs are ripped off from their body like a chakra-made torture rack. 

She advances on the last Shinobi, who can’t even blink before Kushina tears their throat out.

There’s a white noise in her ears, a small hand on her back making her flinch before she realizes it’s just Obito.

Beneath his goggles, his eyes are wide and frightened.

Kushina isn’t sure whether it’s because of her or the Iwa-nin.

“Let’s find Minato-Sensei and Rin and Kakashi,” he begs.

Kushina complies, taking his small, soft hand in hers.

 

\----

 

It seems like Minato ran into trouble too.

There are five bodies in the clearing near them.

Four scattered about where Minato must have teleported and ran his kunai through them, neat and contained.

The fifth body, though, is charred and still smoking.

Rin is busy healing Kakashi’s hand, from where the lightning jutsu he used burned his hand.

She glances back at the body, impressed with Kakashi’s quick thinking.

It’s disquieting too, she thinks, how at ease a twelve-year-old is with killing. 

As they set off back for Konoha that evening, she can see that Rin and Obito are a bit stunned. Seeing or making a first kill will do that to a person.

But Kakashi?

He carries on, perfect little soldier Konoha is grooming him to be.

 

\----

 

The months carry on like this, a thousand little missions to destroy property, to steal, to make a mess of everything. There are skirmishes but Minato and Kushina and the kids come out alive every time.

Sometimes, there’s even funny and strange moments on missions, like when a bear tries to attack Kakashi, or when Rin accidentally sets dinner on fire. Kushina makes a habit of checking on the kids at night after they’ve fallen asleep. Minato picks twigs and plants out of their knotted greasy hair. It reminds Kushina of the final round of the Chunin Exams so many years ago. She may not be on the front lines of the war right now, but she aches for the freedom she felt the day that Minato made that offer, the freedom she feels out here in these dense forests with no people in sight but this Genin team from Konoha.

They settle into an uneasy rhythm, because there is no security or comfort in war.

But of course, there’s a disruption to the tentative peace, when Kushina and Minato are requested for a special force to take down the advancing troops of Kiri.

The night before they leave, they drink themselves silly, sure that this might be the last time they’ll see each other alive. 

Their touches turn into something less chaste, a simple goodnight kiss morphing into a fiery embrace. There are calloused hands tugging at Kushina’s hair, and her nails are leaving red welts in the skin of Minato’s back.

And then, they’re pulling away.

 

\----

 

The mission goes well.

As well as a battle can go during war.

There are one hundred men, and only ten Konoha and Uzushio Shinobi.

It doesn’t matter, not when Minato and Kushina are there.

Their teamwork flows seamlessly, Minato cutting large swathes into the enemy with his teleportation jutsu, and Kushina advancing slowly but inevitably, an unstoppable force of nature. 

She is covered in blood by the time they are done, as is Minato.

Even his unruly gold hair is matted down. Still, she can see his blue eyes beneath all the deep red.

She chokes down the guilt at killing all these people, who had their own lives and families and stories.

There’s blue gazing back at her, and Kushina remembers that she’s doing this for home.

 

\----

 

Later Kushina will think back to this moment and wonder exactly what home meant to her.

Was it truly Uzushio?

Or was home the arms of her childhood friend, hidden away in some lush forest, with the dying firelight to reflect off her hair and three lonely Genin nestled beside her?

 

\----

 

They come back heroes.

The Jounin that single handedly took down an entire Kiri contingent.

The newspapers call them Konoha’s Yellow Flash and the Red-Hot Habanero, as terrible as the names sound.

Kushina doesn’t care. For once in her life, she’s a true hero. There’s no one afraid of her here, of the demon crawling under her skin. There’s no one to pity her here, an orphan in a clan of hundreds.

She’s not surprised when the Sandaime Hokage calls on them to take on another squad. This time it’s Kumo, five hundred men strong.

Neither she nor Minato protest, thinking of the day they will be remembered for their incredible war efforts. The day they are sworn into the office of Kage.

 

\----

 

That night, before they ship out, Kushina goes to Minato’s apartment.

He answers the door and wordlessly, she comes inside.

They cut themselves off last time they were in this position, before they could go too far and get carried away.

Now, Kushina doesn’t care, and neither does Minato. They’re partners in everything that matters, so why not sex, too? If they die tomorrow, Kushina wants to die without regrets.

It’s too easy to fall into Minato’s arms, to let him lead her to his cozy bed in his warm apartment.

They are not violent or rushed, because there will be time for that tomorrow. Instead, Kushina strokes Minato’s golden hair, and lets him run his fingers through hers. Lesser men have been beaten half to death for the same actions. But Minato is no mere man.

Their hands meet slowly, their bodies slower. Every touch is gentle and reaffirming, a physical manifestation of their emotional intimacy. 

Kushina has had experiences with others--an older Kunoichi back in Uzushio, a hardworking civilian man while away on a mission—but it was not like this.

Minato’s touch feels like it’s lighting up her body, like his hands alone will heal her of all that she’s suffered in this cruel world. The constant presence of the Nine-Tails, always egging Kushina on, seems miles away at this moment. 

With Minato, Kushina can pretend she is the same girl she used to be, the one who let Minato into her life all those years ago.

When it is done, Kushina lets Minato draw her close, curled up and tangled as they are in his too-small bed.

She sleeps easy that night.

 

\----

 

And life goes on, with this extra bit of newfound happiness in it. 

Kushina gets to be a war hero to the strongest Hidden Village in history. She gets to be a teacher to children, children who need her help and protection, who love her like their own Sensei. Kushina gets Minato.

They’re more open with their affections now, the banter between them on the training field kinder, more flirtatious than inflammatory. They sit side-by-side in booths the way young lovers do when they go out to eat—it’s terrible to make conversation in this position, but worth it to feel Minato’s warm side pressed up against hers.

Out at Ichiraku, she tucks a stray hair away from his forehead without a second thought. It’s only the curious glances of Rin and Kakashi that make her notice her own lovesick actions.

She even almost moves in with Minato, to the point that she sleeps in his bed more than she sleeps in her own in the soldier’s barracks. She stops using sex as an excuse for staying over. Minato buys her a spare toothbrush to keep at his place. There’s a packet of freeze dried pineapples stashed in the cupboard. 

Kushina never thought she would enjoy this sort of domesticity, tucked in between the horrors of war, but here she is.

It can’t last forever, though. 

Six months pass by, and the contract for the Uzushio soldiers expires. They are expected to return to Uzushio by the end of the week. Either indefinitely or until the two Kages can negotiate a new deal.

She and Minato fight for the first time that week, too tense over the limited time they have left.

It comes to a head during training one day, when she snaps at Kakashi. He grows stiff and withdrawn, the way he always carried himself those months ago. Immediately, Kushina feels guilt pooling in the pit of her stomach. She apologizes, excusing herself from the field.

Before she walks off, Minato catches up with her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, letting the rage filter out of her.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Minato replies, his soft voice carried by the breeze.

“No, I should. I’ve been awful to everyone this week.”

It’s a mature reply, the kind of thing that Mito-sama might have done once upon a time.

“I’ll see you, tonight, right?” Minato asks, rubbing his arm in a subtle tell of nervousness.

She nods before walking away. Tonight, there’s going to be a team dinner at Ichiraku. Nobody has said it out loud, but they all know it’s an unofficial goodbye party for Kushina.

 

\----

 

She doesn’t know where she’s going, instead letting her feet guide her.

Weaving down narrow streets and dark alleys, she eventually finds herself on the edge of city limits, where the foothills stretch into lush forests. She’s at the end of a familiar driveway. A long, dirt path that snakes its way up to the First Hokage’s mansion.

She never knew what happened to it after Mito passed away. But, with her days in Konoha dwindling, she might as well go see now.

As she hikes up the hill, the large green oak trees part, eventually leaving her in front of a stone mansion.

There doesn’t seem to be anybody here right now, but Kushina walks up to the door anyways.

As she nears the door, she spots something out of place. To the right of the door is a bronze plaque, weathered yet shiny. Deeply etched into the plaque are these words:

_Konoha Historical Society Presents_

_The Mansion of the First Hokage_

_Senju Hashirama_

_And His Wife_

_Uzumaki Mito_

Kushina can’t tell whether she’s disappointed that no one is living in the house, or if she’s grateful that Konoha decided to preserve the place. She hopes they take care of the interior, that there aren’t cobwebs forming in the dark hallways, or dust gathering on the large, beautiful windows.

Her hand extends towards the doorknob.

Someone clears their throat behind her.

Kushina whips around, instantly on guard that someone managed to get the jump on her.

But when she sets her eyes on the man, she understands how.

Without his Hokage robes, the Sandaime looks like a young grandfather. 

He would be frail, if he didn’t stand with such authority and if Kushina couldn’t sense the massive chakra pathways thrumming beneath his skin.

She is reminded of the fact this man trained the mighty Sanin himself. In his own youth, he was trained by the Nidaime. They once referred to Sarutobi Hiruzen as the God of Shinobi.

“Without you or Tsunade here to claim it,” he speaks, gesturing at the house, “I thought it best to turn it into a museum.”

Kushina nods silently, too awestruck to muster up a proper response.

Somewhere in the back of her head, Mito-sama’s voice is screaming at her to bow.

“We bring the children up here on weekdays, a field trip to educate them on the history of Konoha.”

“That’s good,” she replies, wondering if this was where Rin and Kakashi and Obito first learned about the story of Uzumaki Mito.

“They do a lot of charity benefits here, in the backyard facing the forest.”

There’s a pause as the Sandaime looks around the spacious front yard.

“It’s a good place to come to think.”

“Yeah,” Kushina replies. That’s what she’s doing here now, isn’t it? The Sandaime must be here for the same reason.

“If you wanted,” the Sandaime continues, “you could claim the house as your own property. I think it’s being underused the way it is now. And I doubt Tsunade will ever return to Konoha long enough to want it.”

Kushina stills at the offer. Her connection to this house, to Konoha, feels so incredibly tenuous. But here stands the Hokage, offering her a residence here.

The scariest thing is that she wants to take him up on the offer. She can imagine her and Tsunade taking hikes in the large forest again. The old guest bedroom would be plenty big enough for Minato and her. Obito and Kakashi and Rin could come over on weekends to play in the backyard. And when they grow older, they could bring their own Genin teams over. They could have team dinners each Sunday evening in the spacious dining hall. There would be enough room for her visiting family members, when they deigned to visit Konoha.

But it’s all a fantasy.

Kushina has to abandon the house of her childhood and return to Uzushio. She has dreams back there, silly as they might seem in the face of the love she has found here in Konoha.

“I haven’t told Minato,” the Sandaime speaks up, “but we’re considering him as a candidate for Hokage.”

Kushina snorts, unsurprised that this is the case. She knows how popular he is with his fellow Jounin, how he kindly treats his Genin team, how intelligent and capable he is in crisis situations in the heat of battle.

It’s an insult to Kushina, who will never have the chance to take Minato back to Uzushio. It’s a complete paradox—the drive and ambition he has, which Kushina loves him for, is the exact reason why he would never be content in her provincial town. She dismisses the image of Minato, blue eyes gazing out over the blue ocean while the ocean breeze rustles his hair, from her mind. It’s not like her to entertain childish fantasies.

“When I return to Uzushio,” Kushina tells the Hokage, “they will consider me a proper candidate for Uzukage.”

The Sandaime nods, like he’s heard rumors of this from across the continent already. 

“You would be well-suited for the position,” he says with genuine honesty in his voice. Kushina marvels at this—she may not have ever thought about the Sandaime, but clearly he has been thinking about her. His trip to the mansion, this entire conversation, are evidence enough of that.

“Thank you,” she replies, not knowing what else she should say.

“That being said,” he continues, “Konoha will always welcome Jinchuurikis. And it’s been a while since we’ve had an Uzumaki here.”

Kushina stiffens at the mention of the Demon, but the Sandaime is looking at her so fondly that she can’t truly feel threatened.

He’s really offering her a place here. 

Kushina is unsure whether it’s due to political reasons or if he truly thinks her presence would make this village a better place. 

It doesn’t really matter, not when she is treated the same way back in Uzushio.

Kushina remembers a conversation with Minato from the night before. Foreheads pressed together in bed, whispering for fear they would start yelling if they talked any louder.

_It’s selfish of me to ask you to stay_ , Minato confessed to her.

_It’s selfish of me to want to stay_ , Kushina replied, unsure what else to say about the matter.

But maybe Kushina deserves to be selfish. She pictures herself in Mito-sama’s position, wife to the Hokage but respectable and powerful in her own right. Mito was always so intent on teaching her the basics of diplomacy and politics, envisioning some future Kushina could never grasp at with her Shinobi-tinted view of the world. Now, Kushina thinks she might understand.

She turns to the Hokage to ask a question she had never considered before. 

 

\----

 

That night at Ichiraku, Kushina shows up late. 

As she approaches from the street, she doesn’t hear the low grumbling of Kakashi, the frantic shouts of Obito, or the tinkling laughter of Rin. 

Instead, she hears Minato trying to coach them.

“—no, Obito, please don’t beg or cry. And Kakashi, you can’t get her to stay here with threats. If we make a big deal out of this, it’ll be harder for all of us. You don’t want to make Kushina-san upset, do you?”

The kids reluctantly agree, and with that, Kushina decides to intervene.

She announces her presence with a booming and joyful ‘hello’, reveling in how everyone, even Minato, is trying to hold back tears.

She pretends not to notice, sitting down and scanning over the menu, which she already has memorized by heart.

“I had an interesting conversation with someone today.”

“Who, Kushina?” Rin presses, ever-curious.

“You might recognize his face. I’ve been told the people who created the Hokage Monument did quite a good job at capturing his visage.”

“You met with the Hokage?” Obito practically shrieks.

“I did,” she confirms with barely suppressed glee. “We had a lovely conversation about dreams and family legacies and real estate. And by the end of it, we decided that I should remain in Konoha for a while yet.”

There’s a beat of silence.

And then, there are four sets of hands on Kushina, as Minato and his Genin tackle her into a tear-filled hug. There’s crying and laughing and some-thinly veiled threats, and by the time they settle back down, even Kushina’s face is a bit red and blotchy from emotion.

Before he pulls away, Minato whispers in her ear.

“We’re going to talk about this later tonight.”

Kushina nods.

She isn’t worried, not one bit.

This is the right decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear the next chapter will be shorter! I want to finish this story by next week :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was like pulling teeth. I'm not satisfied with the way it turned out and I had to break it up early, but here it is anyways.

Kushina is happy for three blissful weeks. Nothing really changes in her daily schedule, only her outlook on life. There’s a sense of permanence and stability in her life she hasn’t felt since before the Second Shinobi War. 

Of course it won’t last forever.

 

\----

 

Kushina wasn’t there when it happened. She only hears about it three days after the fact, when she returns from a 17-day-long solo mission. Approaching the gates of Konoha, a familiar-looking Jounin, probably one of Minato’s many friends, directs her to the hospital.

He won’t say what happened, only insisting that Kushina leave right away.

Images—her parents shipping off for war, Mito-sama lying weak in her bed, Tsunade’s tears disturbing the surface of a clear pond—flash through Kushina’s head.

She’s dashing across the rooftops at a speed that would impress even Minato before she can think twice.

At the hospital entrance, some tired-eyed medic-nin in rumpled scrubs wordlessly points her down the hospital hallway, like they’re already expecting her.

She grips the handle of Room 307 with superhuman strength, nearly ripping the door off its hinges as she steps inside.

Three figures are within the room.

She sees Rin first, tucked into a chair beneath the window, where light trickles in over her sleeping face.

She spots Kakashi next, so small and frail tucked into the large white hospital bed. The beeping of the heart monitor only assures her so much.

And last, she sees Minato, sitting on Kakashi’s right.

At her entrance, he gazes up, blue eyes red-rimmed from recent crying.

“Where’s Obito?” Kushina chokes out, voice cracking on the boy’s name.

Minato gets up and pulls Kushina into his arms. She can feel the spot on her shoulder where his tears fall, feels the way he shakes his head back and forth in wordless confirmation of Kushina’s deepest fears.

 _Oh God_.

\----

 

The truth comes out in those next few minutes, in some empty, bleak hospital hallway, beneath Minato’s stuttering gasps. She’s never seen him like this before, so vulnerable and scared. 

“I should’ve been there to protect them,” Minato whispers. 

Kushina runs her fingers through his fine golden hair, her sturdy arms wrapping around him, unsure of who’s clinging to who. 

She imagines Obito’s still and bloody form, trapped under those rocks. She knows there’s no way to retrieve his body, not with how Minato described the cave-in. 

She wonders if the Uchiha will even care about the bastard orphan. Maybe they will, now that Obito finally awakened his Sharingan. Not that he’ll ever use it.

And god, she hadn’t even thought about Kakashi, with his dead best friend’s eye resting in his skull. It’ll be another death on his shoulders, one more reason for him to hate himself.

And Rin, caught between the two. It was her steady hands that performed the transplant, held her best friend’s hand as he slowly bled out. 

Even Kushina cannot put herself in those shoes. She has never had to watch the light blink out of her loved ones’ eyes, knowing that she was helpless to stop it.

In her arms, Minato heaves out another heavy sob.

Kushina pulls him closer, grateful that his head is tucked into her arms. From this angle, he can’t see her cry.

 

\----

 

A week later, they release Kakashi from the hospital. Kushina is surprised at that, but Minato assures her they’ve done a full psych evaluation. She’s skeptical but agrees anyways. Maybe seeing Kakashi outside of those bleak hospital walls will put a smile back on Rin’s face.

She and Rin are waiting at Ichiraku now, where Minato and Kakashi are supposed to meet them.

Kushina checks her watch again. They’re already 19 minutes late. Just as she starts to fear something else has gone wrong, she hears a familiar voice from behind her.

“Hope you didn’t order without us!” yells Minato from the doorway.

Kushina wrenches her body around to face her boyfriend, an instant feeling of relief settling in as she sees Kakashi’s small form at his side. Despite his jovial tone, Minato’s smile is pulled wide and forced. Kushina hates to see him like this.

Unexpectedly, Rin is the first to respond.

“You’re late!” she yells angrily.

There’s a pause as everyone faces the girl. Her pale face grows redder and redder as she realizes what she’s said.

“I mean...um...it’s nice to see you guys.”

Kushina frowns at Rin’s meek and ashamed posture.

“Actually, Rin has a point. You’re late,” she points out, laying a reassuring hand on Rin’s back.

By now Minato and Kakashi have walked up to their table and are seating themselves.

“I’ll take the blame for that one. You see, we passed the Yamanaka Flower Shop on the way here, and I got a bit distracted,” Minato replies with an easy confidence.

Kakashi sinks into his seat as the two women watch Minato rummage around for something under his jacket.

“I saw these lovely tiger lilies in the window, and I couldn’t resist buying them.”

He pulls a partially crushed stalk of flowers out of his jacket, presenting them to Kushina with a goofy flourish.

“The most beautiful flowers I could find, for the most beautiful woman I know,” he says, looking dead into Kushina’s eyes.

She can hear Kakashi sigh in disgust, and Rin’s little ‘awwww’, but she doesn’t care.

She almost hates it when Minato pulls crap like this.

The keyword being almost.

But Kushina is a grown woman now, far past the point of believing in cooties or whatever it is tweens like to whine about nowadays. Instead, she takes the proffered flowers, and leans over the table to give Minato a chaste peck on the cheek.

Now Kakashi is audibly gagging.

Good—if the boy didn’t react at all, Kushina might've been worried.

 

\----

 

Dinner is going along fine when Kushina doesn’t focus on the growling feeling of absence in the pit of her stomach. She teases Minato and he teases right back, while Rin pushes the conversation along with polite questions and Kakashi watches with silent but attentive eyes.

Every few minutes, Kushina expects a loud voice to interrupt with some silly comment or a mild insult aimed at Kakashi, but it never happens. Instead, the conversation lulls, and everyone looks down at their own meals, too uncomfortable to fill the silence.

The sixth time this happens, Kakashi snaps.

He drops his chopsticks into the bowl, the sound of wood hitting ceramic filling the quiet, sad atmosphere.

“I’m so fucking fed up!” he yells, the sound of his raised voice startling Kushina out of her own thoughts.

Minato tries to intervene.  
“Kakashi—”

“How can you all sit here and pretend everything's okay?” 

His one visible eye darts around the table desperately, silently accusing each of them.

Kushina shivers when she thinks about the left side of Kakashi’s face. She wonders if she would see Obito’s familiar brown looking back, or an impersonal blood red. She wonders how long Kakashi has stared in the mirror already.

“Rin,” he says, voice now quieter with simmering anger, “he was your best friend! Are you going to act like he never existed? Do you still remember the sound of his voice? The shape of his face?”

Rin gasps at that, bursting into sobs under Kakashi’s scrutiny.

Minato tries again.

“Kakashi—”

“And you, Sensei! Is this how you always react when you lose a teammate? Like we’re replaceable? Is that what we are to you? Just some extra name on a miles-long roster?”

Minato looks _shattered_. 

It’s a familiar expression to Kushina, who has seen it every night this past week, as Minato cries himself to sleep over Uchiha Obito’s death. She’s had to sit silently and listen as Minato rakes himself over the coals for something he had no control over, a cruel twist of fate that cut a boy’s life too short, too soon.

She won’t let some emotionally-repressed child blame Minato any more than he blames himself.

Wordlessly, Kushina stands up and snatches the back of Kakashi’s shirt.

He thrashes about, useless in the face of Kushina’s sheer strength.

She lifts his small form up by the scruff of his shirt, hauling him out of the restaurant behind her.

“Shut up and come with me,” she growls out, ignoring Minato and Rin, who is still crying at the table.

Kakashi feebly tries to pull himself from her grasp, but it doesn’t matter to the Jounin.

She drags him down the street and across town, uncaring of the scene she makes. To any observer, it looks like a mother reprimanding her tantrum-throwing child, or a Jounin enacting harsh discipline on their Genin.

She doesn’t stop till she’s dragged him all the way to the edge of the city limits, to a small garden.

In the evening, it’s lit up by soft lantern light, the surrounding trees casting shadows over the grass.

In the center of the clearing is a rock, taller and wider than both Kushina and Kakashi. From afar, the stone seems to have some strange texture across its surface.

Kushina knows better. She’s come here every day this week with Minato, as soon as they made the most recent addition on it.

Standing at the center of this quiet little garden is Konoha’s memorial stone. 

Kakashi balks at the sight of the stone, but Kushina drags him towards the most recently etched name on the rock.

_Uchiha Obito._

No more, no less. There wouldn’t be enough room on the rock if they were to put dates and epitaphs. The Uchiha clan won’t bother to mark an empty grave for Obito, not after spending the whole week negotiating for his Sharingan, which still lies covered under Kakashi’s mask.

“He’s not forgotten,” Kushina insists, voice cold and stern even to her.

Kakashi doesn’t respond, his gloved fingers reaching forward to touch the engraving.

She tries again.

“As long as we’re living, he isn’t being forgotten. And tormenting yourself and Minato and Rin over his death dishonors his memory.”

Kakashi doesn’t look up at her but Kushina can tell he’s listening. He always does.

“Would he really want you tearing yourself apart in guilt?”

Kakashi lets out a shaky breath.

“No,” he replies, his conviction unwavering. “He’d want me to be better.”

Finally getting what she wanted to hear, Kushina pulls Kakashi into her arms.

He lets her, his smaller frame clutching to the fabric of her vest like it's the only thing keeping him upright.

They stand there for god knows how long, Kakashi crying until he doesn’t have any tears left.

When he’s finally done, he pulls away, pulling his mask up over his face. Kushina catches glint of red, averting her eyes before Kakashi notices her staring.

“I’m okay,” he says, like there won’t be bad days in the future—days where he can barely get out of bed, days where his words and fists will hit too hard, days where he’ll be unable to look his mismatched eyes in the mirror.

No, Kakashi isn’t okay. Not yet.

But it’s a start.

 

\----

 

Over the span of the next month, Minato’s team knits itself back together.

Rin is quieter now, but more determined in her medical training. She doesn’t stay for dinner after practice most nights, instead opting to go do volunteer shifts at the hospital. These days, the hospital is always overcrowded, and Rin’s help is always welcome. Kushina can’t imagine what kinds of things she sees there in the middle of wartime. 

Minato is not as lighthearted during practice. He runs them on drills over and over, until the two kids can perform them perfectly, or until they’re unable to move. He’s still kind and patient, but his smiles are less frequent these days. Bags have begun to set under his eyes as the constant pressures of war weigh over him. And Kushina can see how his eyes trail over Rin and Kakashi whenever they’re sent on missions. She’d laugh and call him a mama bear, but his paranoia is reasonable given the circumstances.

Kakashi is still aloof, the weight of Obito’s sacrificed pinned on his shoulders. He never exposes that spinning, red eye, and no one asks him to. He often shows up ten minutes late to practice, excuses about giant puddles blocking the road and lost neighborhood cats. It’s painful to see this poor imitation of Obito, but Kushina won’t tell Kakashi not to stop. Not when he’s trying so sincerely to be a better person, with the way he helps Rin up after spars, and the corny jokes he delivers flatly to Minato.

And as for Kushina? 

She’s become a pillar of stability for them all. She’s given more hugs this past month than she ever has before in her life. When the mood grows too dim, she's the one to crack a joke or change the subject. On missions when Minato’s eyes grow tired and heavy from their constant scanning of the surroundings, Kushina takes over surveillance duty. She’ll brush the fine hair off his forehead, kiss him, and whisper “sleep” like it’s a blessing. 

Tenderness is a strange feeling for Kushina, but she’s learning it well.

On solo missions, or within squadrons, Kushina numbs herself to the sensations of war.

There is no rush of anger of the Nine-Tails, no guilt for the indiscriminate masses she kills.

Kushina does her job, and she always comes home.

She tells Minato and the Genin not to wait at her for the gates like this.

Instead, they go to Ichiraku while Kushina washes the dried blood out of her coarse, red mane of hair.

At the dinner table, she picks at the blood caked under her fingernails absently, used to the sight and sensation of the dark, rusty brown.

 

\----

 

_When the troops march on Uzushio, it’s a sunny day. Monsoon Season is a few months away, and for now, the weather is blissfully warm and mild._

_Shinobi of all ages, from twelve-year-old Genin to long since retired and graying Jounin, wait on the sandy, white beaches, the spirals on their uniform forehead protectors glinting proudly in the sun._

_They’ve had less than a day’s notice. There’s no way to get a message to Konoha in time, nor a way to evacuate, as the city rests on a large island._

_Across the banks, the enemy lines up, black masses gathering like swarms of flies._

_There is no uniformity in their forehead protectors or their clothing. In fact, the only thing they share is the drive they have to tear Uzushio apart, brick by brick._

_The Uzushio are outnumbered five to one._

_Their seals stall for a few hours, slowly picking off the edges of the approaching army. But seals, as reliable as they are, can be dismantled._

_Every carving on the white-stained buildings and within the cobblestone streets is ripped up and shattered, dismantled with a bit of extra chakra or a few thrown kunai._

_The army advances, sure and steady as a rising tide. Everyone who gets in their way—man, woman, child, civilian, and shinobi alike—is crushed underfoot._

_The brilliant red hair of all those Uzumaki blends in with their bodies are they’re turned into red smears across the ground._

_It’s a prophecy come true, one even young Kushina had predicted after the Second Shinobi War._

_Uzushio is rich in history and power, their residents the world’s only masters of Fuinjutsu. But they are small and isolated, just like Amegakure once was._

_If history is doomed to repeat itself, then this is an outlier. Because Ame was attacked, but it still survives._

_Uzushio is raised to the ground. The people and buildings alike are torn apart._

_No one lives to tell the story._

_There won’t be any folk songs or bedtime stories about Uzushio’s last stand._

_Nobody will know that it ended in the heart of the city, with the Uzukage, Kushina’s kin, and a couple surviving Jounin._

_Nobody will know that they fought till the bitter end, taking out as many Shinobi as possible with the remaining time they had left._

_No one will know that the Uzukage died last, ending the battle on his own terms._

_How, bleeding from a thousand kunai cuts across his body, dark hair matted against his dark skin from beading sweat, he summoned the last of his chakra reserves._

_He let out a mighty war cry, this man who was one of the finest warriors Uzushio had ever seen, and slammed his fists into the seals below him._

_And all around, a great cracking noise was heard._

_The Sandaime Uzukage, his chakra reserves now completely depleted, slumped onto the ground, his lifeless eyes reflecting the sinking sun._

_The buildings around began to crumble. Libraries, schools, restaurants—all of it collapsed. Even into the suburbs, where Kushina’s childhood home lay._

_This was the final seal of Uzushio, built into its very foundations many generations ago._

_It was a kill switch, meant for the day Uzushio fell to enemies with no hope of recovery. It would destroy every single one of their scrolls, their secrets, their history._

_You see, the entire Uzumaki clan and the citizens of Uzushio were all dead._

_The Uzukage had decided that their culture should die with them, so he leveled the once great city of Uzushio beyond all recognition._

_The enemy troops tried to flee the chaos and destruction, but hundreds were swept up by the falling chunks of limestone and sinking stone streets. Their blood ran into the streets, mixing with that of the dead innocents already laying there._

_This is the totality of war._

_There is no honor in indiscriminate killing, and no honor in surviving._

_Death is the only certainty, as the people of Uzushio would learn._

_Their still cooling bodies were buried not by human hands, but by the city itself._

_And above the rubble and ash that was once Uzushio, the sun set, its color every bit as brilliant as the hair of the now-extinct Uzumakis._

 

\----

 

Kushina lays in bed for five days straight.

She does not eat or sleep or shower, besides a few fitful moments of sleep she awakens from with screaming. Every bit of food Minato brings her she struggles to choke down for fear of vomiting.

She does not cry.

No, tears seem too small for the magnitude of this loss.

She relives the moment over and over again in her head.

Tries to imagine how her family went down dying, but her mind comes up blank, only pulling images of the people she’s killed on the battlefield these past few months.

 _I should have died with them_ , she thinks in her lowest moments.

_I’m an endangered animal now._

The last of her kind.

For all of her family’s neglect, she has never been so alone.

A hawk flies in from the window that Minato opened this morning.

It’s from the Hokage himself, Kushina notes dispassionately.

Nevertheless, she takes the scroll from the hawk’s razor-sharp talons. Her gray eyes gaze into the hawk’s black ones, a wordless dismissal of the animal.

She’s got nothing better to do, so she opens the scroll. Besides, reading it doesn’t mean she has to do what it says. If the ANBU busted into Minato’s small apartment right now to drag her off, Kushina wouldn’t even protest. She’s too tired, old in a way her physical body cannot convey.

Instead of any official wax seals or mission orders like she was expecting, the scroll is informal and brief.

It’s written in a familiar messy handwriting, no greetings or signatures, only a list of coordinates and the name of a town about 150 miles east of Konoha.

Kushina thinks of all her worldly possessions back in Uzushio. Kushina may not have been there, but she knew about the seals in the town center. Even if she were to return, everything would be ash by now. 

Even that old engagement ring trusted to her so many years ago.

Her mind is made up in a split second.

Kushina gets out of bed and heads for the shower.

If Tsunade saw her like this, she’d kick Kushina’s ass all the way into next week.

 

\----

 

It’s surprisingly easy to leave Konoha.

Minato doesn’t protest at all, too kind and understanding of Kushina’s circumstances to question her choices.

She doesn’t know if her love will survive this. Not when anything other than grief will dishonor her village’s—no, her family’s—memory. She knows he’ll still write to her, but Kushina can’t imagine a life with him in Konoha anymore.

The concept of happiness seems like some hazy summer daydream.

Rin gives her a hug before she sets out, demanding that Kushina write to her. She doesn’t ask about the Sanin, but Kushina can see the hero worship behind her eyes.

Kakashi gets her a new senbon kit, presenting it with something like embarrassment on his face. Kushina accepts it with a weak smile. Kakashi has a debt to pay to Kushina, but both of them know he won’t get her through this—not the way she did for him with Obito.

The Sandaime, surprisingly, is at the gates too. He does not say a word to her, but his delivery of the scroll was approval enough.

She waves goodbye, setting off down the road.

There is not an ounce of optimism in her body, but Kushina keeps her head high as she walks.

If the best medic-nin in the world cannot heal her, no one can.

 

\----

 

The town is small, not a Shinobi in sight. But even here, she can see the whispers and paranoia that seem to come with war.

She’s devoid of a uniform, her obvious red hair pinned up and underneath a headband. Her chakra signal is masked too, not that any soldier would dare take her on if they recognized her.

As for her darker skin and southern bone structure, there’s nothing to be done about that besides a faint henge.

But Kushina won’t hide her features away like that, not when she’s the sole survivor of a genocide. 

She asks some nervous farmer where she might find Tsunade, careful to only use physical descriptors.

She’s sure that Tsunade has enemies after her too.

He stumbles through directions to the nearest bar, and Kushina nods before leaving.

As she approaches the dingy building, she can hear a commotion inside.

Hackles raised, she bursts into the door ready for a fight.

And instead of a bar fight, she finds a large central table, with a bunch of old drunks playing cards.

One of them is grumbling and throwing his cards down, and through the smoky interior, Kushina can see Tsunade’s face, beaming wide and sloppily as she takes the man’s chips for herself.

Kushina’s heart sinks in disappointment, because the woman is practically a stranger. Yes, Tsunade’s face is the same, from her high arching brows to her pale forehead and regal nose. She hasn’t aged a day since Kushina last saw her, not a strand of gray in her ash-blonde hair. Her nails are immaculately manicured, sharp in a way that doesn’t imply she’s being doing much surgery lately.

But this is not the Tsunade she knows. The Tsunade of Kushina’s early childhood was prideful and dignified, the princess of Konoha in everything but name. She was fiercely intelligent and powerful, her actions in the Second Shinobi War nearly single handedly winning it for Konoha. She was student to a Hokage, granddaughter to another, and proved herself worthy of that legacy.

What she lacked for in Uzumaki looks she made up for in spirit, unbendable and determined. She wore the same diamond regeneration seal on her forehead that Uzumaki Mito once had.

But none of this comes across in the woman sitting before her. This woman is a drunken fool, playing cards with some elderly civilian hicks while letting her country go to war.

People are dying, and here Tsunade the healer sits, whittling away her days with petty gambling. The regeneration seal isn’t being used in honorable battle—no, instead it sits on Tsunade's unwrinkled forehead like a silly trinket, it’s only purpose to preserve her good looks.

Kushina turns back towards the exit, unwillingly to witness anymore. She doesn’t know what she expected from the woman who abandoned Konoha, but it certainly wasn’t this. This is not the kindred soul Kushina looked up to as a young girl.

Just as she reaches the door, a voice calls her name. It’s not the booming, slurred words of Tsunade, who’s too still absorbed in the game she’s now losing, but a soft voice, from a woman sitting at a booth in one of the dark corners of the bar.

Kushina approaches, and the woman beckons her to sit.

“I’m glad you came, Kushina-san,” the girl says, the honorific surprising Kushina because this girl is only a few years younger than herself.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Kato Shizune, apprentice to Tsunade.”

Kushina nods, extending a hesitant hand towards the young woman.

“You already seem to know who I am.”

Shizune nods eagerly at this.

“Yes, Tsunade talks about you a lot.”

Her gaze flickers to the table, where Tsunade’s fists bang down against the table in anger.

“You’ll have to excuse her. It’s just one of those nights for her.”

Kushina nods along, unconvinced. From her own perspective, this looks like a regular habit for the once-esteemed Shinobi. She starts to get up, but Shizune’s own hand darts out to grab her own. Her grip is surprisingly strong—she must have been a Shinobi too at one point in her life.

“Won’t you stay until tomorrow morning when Tsunade sobers up? I imagine your journey here was quite long, and it’s so late out already. We can talk then.”

Kushina sighs and sits down. For all Kushina’s impatience and frustration, Shizune makes a good point. Besides, she has nowhere else to go. She might as well see this through.

Kushina waves her hand at the bartender, signaling for a drink.

She might as well stare her sorrows down in a bottle, since it seems to be working so well for Tsunade already.

 

\----

 

The next morning, Kushina wakes up bleary eyed with a pounding headache at the back of her skull.

She’s on the floor of an unfamiliar room, swaddled in blankets.

As her eyes scan the room, they meet a familiar soft brown.

“Morning, Brat,” Tsunade says from her careful perch on the table. From the steaming mug of coffee in her hands and her state of disheveledness, Kushina can guess that Tsunade is equally hungover.

“Shizune went out to get breakfast. You remember Shizune, right?” Tsunade says, a pinch or irreverent humor in her voice.

And Kushina does. She remembers Shizune watching passively and nonjudgmentally as she downed drink after drink. She remembers Shizune scrambling to grab her as she rose up to confront Tsunade, the girl’s hands falling away in the face of Kushina’s battle-hardened strength.

She remembers screaming at Tsunade in anger. 

A messy fight outside underneath the pitch-black night sky.

Falling into Tsunade’s arms crying.

Crying for the first time in months, until there was nothing left.

And then, finally, peaceful oblivion in the arms of someone strong and familiar.

“I said some things last night, didn’t I?” Kushina asks, throat scratchy from dehydration.

“As a matter of fact,” Tsunade replies in an even tone, “You did. You called me ‘a traitor to Konoha and a disgrace to Mito’, among other things.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kushina stumbles out, ashamed of her own words. “I didn’t mean any of it.”

Tsunade stares at her, face impassive and indecipherable.

“But you did. And you should say it. I am a traitor to Konoha and a disgrace to Mito’s name.”

“No, no, Tsunade, you’re not. I was angry and hurting and drunk and said some things I shouldn’t have.”

Tsunade heaves a big sigh, her posture slumping into something more casual, more human.

“I’m a disgraced alcoholic doctor with a gambling addiction, Kushina. My debts have debts. And where am I as my village sacrifices children in the largest war the world has ever seen since the hidden Villages were first established? Where am I when my grandmother’s family is massacred, and their city sacked and pillaged? Fucking off to random towns in the middle of nowhere.”

Kushina gasps at the harsh words, tears forming in her eyes before she can blink them away.

Tsunade gestures to herself.

“This is what war does to the survivors, Kushina. They call me a hero back home, but I’m the biggest coward on this goddamn planet. All those indiscriminate soldiers I killed, tore apart with my bare hands? It didn’t matter in the end, because I lost my loved ones all the same. And this miserable existence is my punishment.”

Kushina sits there, paralyzed with awful realization.

The woman before her is incapable of healing or wisdom or true kindness.

Tsunade doesn’t have answers, but she does have something valuable to Kushina.

Understanding.

 

\----

 

A letter arrives by way of hawk a few weeks after Kushina sets out with Tsunade and Shizune.

It’s addressed to Kushina specifically, and she ignores the teasing voice of Tsunade and the barrage of questions from Shizune as she tears open the scroll.

It’s written in Minato’s handwriting, and a wave of nostalgia sweeps over Kushina so strong she nearly loses her footing.

_Dear Kushina,_

_I hope this letter finds you well on your travels._

_I don’t quite know what to say., and it’s strange. I’ve never encountered this problem before._

_We miss you back in Konoha. We still train and go on missions, but there’s something missing without you around._

_Rin’s working her way up the hospital hierarchy, and though she won’t ask herself, I know she’s dying to know what Tsunade-sama is like after all these years._

_Kakashi is doing well. I’ve seen him smile a few times in these couple of weeks, but never as big as he did with you or Obito. The higher ups are considering promoting him to Jounin, with these wartime pressures and all._

_There are talks of building a monument to Uzushio, once the war is over. So people won’t forget the sacrifices of your family. Me and a couple other Jounin are spearheading the initiative, when we’re not away on missions._

_I’ll keep this letter brief on the off-chance it never makes its way to you, but I’ll say one last thing before I sign off._

_I miss you. And I know you can’t come home right now. So all I can hope for is that you’re out there healing. If things ever get rough, you’re welcome to come back home. You’ll always have a home with me._

_Love,_

_Minato._

There’s a hastily drawn pineapple next to his name, same as ever. 

Kushina folds the letter up, placing it carefully in her travel pack. She once had a chest for all these correspondences, but she’s sure it’s been reduced to rubble, just like all of her other belongings in Uzushio.

She would consider going back to check, if she wasn’t so scared of what she might find. 

The Hokage’s hawk is still circling above, and Kushina borrows a scratch piece of paper from Shizune, scribbling out a quick note addressed to Minato.

She sends the hawk away with her letter, staring up at the too-blue shade of the sky until the bird becomes a faint dot, and then nothing.

There’s a tugging at her elbow, then a scolding voice in her ears.

“Stop staring at the sun, kid,” Tsunade says in annoyance. “Are you trying to make yourself blind?”

Kushina snaps out of her state of confusion, her gray eyes settling back on the road as they press onwards.

 

\----

 

The letters keep on coming in the subsequent weeks. They’re everything from harrowing war stories to the most inane going-abouts of Minato’s day, down to his weekly shopping list in one particularly strange letter. 

He sends her passionate love confessions and sweet, encouraging notes. The latter always make Kushina blush more.

She even gets a note from Rin and Kakashi in one letter, their voices ringing in her ears as she scans the writing over.

In the meantime, she and Tsunade and Shizune travel from town to town. They meet locals during the day, Kushina taking in their stories as Tsunade gambles away whatever savings they have. Shizune takes small jobs healing people to cover the losses, and at night, they all get drunk together.

It’s the closest thing Kushina has to family right now, though she wouldn’t call herself happy.

 _It feels like I’m half ghost_ , she tells Minato in one such letter.

 _Cursed to wander in limbo. An unhappy existence for the rest of my life_.

She doesn’t spare a single detail in these letters. If she can’t trust Minato with her deepest fears and secrets, then there’s no one in the world she can.

When she runs out of things to say, she describes the people of Uzushio in excruciating detail.

Her nosy neighbors, and what kind of dog they had. The two annoying Genin teammates she had, and what their favorite foods were. The elders of the Uzumaki clan, and the precise silvery-red shade their hair turned as they grew older.

She hopes if she writes down all of it, she won’t be as quick to forget.

Kushina imagines herself one day in the distant future, when she can’t remember the layout of her hometown, the way the waves sounded against rocks during high tide, the names of all of her now-dead kin.

She dry-heaves at the thought. 

Isn’t it bad enough that she cannot remember her parents’ faces and voices?

 

\----

 

Six months after Obito’s death, three after the destruction of Uzushio, and almost a full year after she first came to Konoha, Kushina gets a letter from Minato that’s fatter than any she’s received before.

It’s his handwriting on the address, but the Hokage’s seal is stamped across it—a sign of confidentiality.

She tears it open, fingers trembling as she does so.

It takes her less than five minutes to read the five-page document, Tsunade and Shizune waiting in silence as she does so. 

When she finishes, she stares up at them with watery eyes.

“We need to return to Konoha right away,” she demands, her voice steady with determination.

 

\----

 

Tsunade puts up a fuss at first, but Kushina doesn’t yield.

First, she demands, uncompromising and hard.

Then, she yells, loud enough to scare birds out of the surrounding trees.

Finally, she pleads, on her knees and desperate, hair hanging so low it brushes with the dirt at her sandaled feet.

This is when Tsunade yields. She’s seen Kushina drunk and angry, sad and hopeless. But she’s never seen her belittle herself this way.

It’s not a good look for the young woman, not when she is the last surviving Uzumaki, a powerful Shinobi in her own right. Not when her chakra is tinged with that of the Nine-Tails’.

Not when she is the spitting image of a young Uzumaki Mito.

If family made Tsunade leave Konoha, then it’s only natural that family can make her return.

 

\----

 

They arrive in the middle of the night, greeted at the gate by an alert Minato.

He’s practically bouncing off the ground with nervous energy, a state Kushina hasn’t seen him in since he was a young child.

He sees Tsunade and Shizune waiting behind her and greets them with a bow that Tsunade quickly waves off.

“Just show me where the boy is,” she commands, slipping into her former authority as if it’s a well-worn and familiar coat.

He nods, and all four of them are leaping to the rooftops, hidden by the shroud of night.

They sneak in through an open hospital room, two ANBU guards waiting for them.

 _All this effort for one little boy_ , Kushina thinks.

She’s been torn between happiness and grief ever since she got the letter. It’s the equilibrium of the universe—all of the lives Kushina has taken in exchange for Uzushio. Obito for Rin.

She can only begin to imagine how Minato is. She wonders if Kakashi has woken from his coma yet.

As they cluster in the small room, their eyes shift towards the hospital bed.

In it lies Uchiha Obito, impossibly small, a thousand wires and beeping monitors connected to his body.

Kushina gasps despite herself. She’s not sure what’s more surprising—seeing his face after all these months, or the dramatic scarring that covers half his body, leaf-vein patterns running over his left flank.

Tsunade stands still, too.

Kushina follows the line of her eyes, to the red-tinged gauze wrapped around his body. 

She’s heard a story from Tsunade over these past few months, collected in bits and pieces. The death of her fiancée, her reluctance to heal anyone or perform surgery, the shaking hands at the sight of any blood at all.

She can put the hints together. She knows exactly what kind of demons plague Tsunade.

This is no time for hemophobia. Not when Obito's life is on the line. Not when Rin will never have the chance to see him again.

She grabs Tsunade’s arm, pulling the woman close enough to whisper in her ear.

“He’s the same age as Nawaki was,” Kushina hisses. “I don’t care about this phobia. If you let him die, I’ll never forgive you for it. None of us will.”

Tsunade looks back, stricken.

“Now do your job and _heal_.”

She releases Tsunade's arm and the woman lurches forward for a moment.

Then, she straightens out.

“Everybody out,” she commands, already sanitizing her hands and pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

Kushina and Minato comply.

 

\----

 

It’s a sleepless night for Minato and Kushina both, back at his apartment where they wait, helpless to do anything else.

Her skin is itching with rage at Kiri’s plan. Turning Rin into a jinchuuriki was beyond cruel. Her killing herself by Kakashi’s hand is almost too horrible to consider.

And then there’s Obito. They don’t know what happened—not when he passed out as soon as Minato made it back to Konoha, but here’s speculation that he was tortured at the hands of one Uchiha Madara. 

Uchiha Madara, who should be long dead.

But they can’t do anything about it until Obito comes out of surgery and is given a full psych eval. The same applies for Kakashi.

Instead, Kushina paces about Minato’s small apartment, the beast raging under her skin.

Minato takes one step too close to her, and suddenly they are falling into each other’s arms.

The sex is vicious and rough that night in a way it never has been before.

There’s scratching and biting and hair-pulling on both sides, and when they’re finally done, Minato and Kushina lay in bed, devoid of restless energy for the moment.

Kushina palms at a particularly bad scratch on Minato’s neck and wonders if she’s more beast than human.

She hopes Rin didn't feel this way in her last moments. It’s a terrible way to go, unimaginable for a thirteen-year-old child.

 

\----

 

A week passes, in which too much happens, and Kushina is almost grateful to leave Konoha.

She is careful to hide herself from both Kakashi and the now-awake Obito, despite Minato’s content begging.

She can’t face them like this, not when a familiar sort of numbness is trickling over her skin. She knows she should mourn Rin the same as she mourned Obito, but it’s too much in too little time. Kushina is already so torn up from the destruction of Uzushio that she can’t spare any extra grief for little Rin.

Rin who never got to meet her idol, even though Rin was indirectly responsible for her return to Konoha. Rin who will never be promoted to Chunin or Jounin, whose purple cheeks and kind smile will never be seen at the central hospital ever again.

There will come a day in the distant future where Kushina will properly grieve Rin, but today is not that day.

Meanwhile, the Sandaime has been showing up more and more to talk to his student.

Each meeting ends worse and worse, until Tsunade is screaming at him.

She storms out to the gates that night, Shizune and Kushina in tow.

Kushina doesn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Minato this time. 

It doesn’t matter. He’ll write her another letter soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright the goal is for this fic to be done by Thanksgiving.
> 
> Wish me luck :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in two days...an absolute madman.

Life carries on for Kushina, even when she wishes it wouldn’t.

As the months roll by, she misses home more and more. Every person with ginger hair catches her eye. The same goes for people with swarthier skin. Her ears strain for the rounded tones and musical lilting of her native southern dialect, her chakra senses on alert at everything tinged cool and purple like a warm summer's breeze.

In the daytime, when Tsunade is still sober and Shizune drags them through poor civilian towns on house calls, Kushina makes idle conversation. The war is dwindling to a close after two long years, its effects felt both near and far. Every place they come to is desperate and poor, more refugees than natives. She listens to the stories of these people, feeling something like curiosity and empathy. No matter what language, age, nationality, or background, they say the same things.

Dead sons and daughters, droughts and starvation, simple homesteads raided and burned to the ground by bloodthirsty bandits and Shinobi alike. 

She doesn’t know what Uzushio looks like now, a year after the massacre, but she reckons it looks quite similar to a lot of the abandoned settlements they come across. Kushina wonders if that makes her a refugee too.

She can feel something stirring in her bones again, different from the rumbling anger of the Nine-Tails bound to her soul. It’s a familiar feeling, this drive or ambition. Kushina remembers it back when her parents first died—she had a dream back then, to be the best Shinobi Uzushio had ever seen, to work her way up to the position of Uzukage.

Those goals seem silly now, not when Uzushio is nonexistent, not when Kushina followed orders and killed hundreds as an active Shinobi.

But she wonders what it is she really wants now, talking to these refugees, civilians, and ex-Shinobi. 

In the back of her head is Mito-sama’s voice, whispering old lessons from her childhood.

 

\----

 

Minato’s letters keep on coming, by way of hawk.

Kushina responds to each and every one with a reluctant sort of eagerness. Tsunade and Shizune tease her every time the birds fly by, and Kushina does her best to ignore them.

She doesn’t like feeling so vulnerable, but it can’t be helped—not when she sees the blue sky and thinks home, waves crashing against the shore in Uzushio and Minato’s kind, patient eyes.

Tsunade catches her gazing at the sky, the Hokage’s hawk circling lazily overhead. 

“You’ve got a good thing going here,” she grunts out, careful not to look Kushina head-on. “A man like that is hard to find.”

Kushina looks up, surprised at the tenderness in Tsunade’s voice.

“Hold onto it tightly, or else life will rip it away,” Tsunade cautions, her eyes distant with memories of the past.

Kushina almost laughs, thinking of Minato’s hands, flashing through jutsu faster than the human eye can see, gripping kunai with practiced and lethal ease. He is a genius still, one of the strongest Shinobi in the most powerful hidden village in the world. He survived the Third Shinobi War—there is no force on earth that can defeat him.

“I’m not afraid of his death,” Kushina proclaims boldly, youthful and too-sure of herself.

Tsunade grins bitterly, “And what about his loyalty? Do you think your beauty and spirit will be enough for him? Do you know men to be faithful from afar, Kushina?”

Kushina frowns. 

Tsunade has a point. She’d seen it too many times as a child, when Shinobi were sent on long-term missions. Their partners and spouses would start off confident and faithful, but as days and months and weeks trickled by, their eyes would begin to wander. By the time the Shinobi in question returned to the village, their lovers had moved on. 

She knows Minato is attractive, and smart, and sweet. To any Konoha woman, he would be a great catch. But for now, he is committed to her, even in her absence. She worries it won’t last forever.

“You’re right,” she concedes to Tsunade, eyes darkening with paranoia.

She takes out a piece of paper, scribbling down some instructions and coordinates. As she raises her hand to the sky, scroll wrapped tight inside it, the hawk swoops down from the sky. It doesn’t even scratch her as it picks up the scroll, flying back towards Konoha and Minato.

Whether their relationship will end or continue, Kushina would like to see Minato one last time.

 

\----

 

A week later in a small town thirty miles outside of Konoha, Kushina waits at the town gates, doing her best not to look like a stood-up date or jilted bride.

Minato was supposed to meet her at sundown, as per her instructions, because Kushina knows that the setting sun lights her hair up like fire, drawing elegant shadows over her nose and cheeks. Kushina is not a vain woman, but it’s been a long time since she’s seen Minato, and as Mito-sama once said, first impressions are important.

But here she is underneath the dark night sky, shivering as a cold breeze pierces through her lightweight green dress.

She feels the fine hairs running along her arms prick up, her skin pimpling from the temperature.

She motions to rub her arms but stops suddenly when the sensation is doubled in her chakra pathways.

There’s a brilliant flash of light before she can react, and instantly, Minato is standing a bit too close, towering her over and crowding her space after months apart.

“Haven’t you heard?” Kushina questions with a quirk of her brow, “It’s rude to keep a lady waiting.”

Minato smiles back impishly. 

“Good thing I’m no gentleman,” he replies.

Kushina laughs at the ridiculousness of the statement. If Minato is not a gentleman, then no person on this earth is. 

They stand there for a moment, too close and quiet. Kushina would be uncomfortable if she wasn’t so focused on the warm feeling in her chest.

The impromptu staring contest is interrupted by the growling of Kushina’s stomach. She coughs awkwardly and checks the time on her watch. It’s significantly later than she thought. If they wait any longer, the restaurant they were going to go to for dinner will be closed. 

“Well,” she huffs out, flicking her hair behind her for dramatic emphasis, “It seems that no woman’s appetite waits—not even for Konoha’s golden scoundrel.”

She reaches out to grasp Minato’s calloused hand, dragging him into the small town.

“A woman's appetite indeed,” Minato mutters under his breath, his fair complexion mottled by a growing blush on his cheeks.

 

\----

 

Being with Minato is like putting on a pair of well-worn sweatpants—no, that’s not quite right. Something sexier maybe? A pair of underpants? No, that’s just gross.

The point is this: All the time spent apart, between her and Minato, all the personal tragedies and war stories and individual trauma? Everything washes away when they’re together.

And it’s scary.

Kushina is so busy staring into Minato’s soft blue eyes, listening to the small breaths he takes between words, feeling his warm and sturdy flank press into her own side, that she doesn’t think about her dead family and her dead friends and neighbors and teammates. She doesn’t think about the atrocities she committed during the war, or how there’s a monster dwelling inside her, bubbling closer to the surface with each passing day.

For those terrifying minutes when they’re out at dinner, Kushina can’t remember the names or faces of her dead cousins, aunts, and uncles. She doesn’t know what the seagulls flying over Uzushio sound like, or how to form her mouth around words in the native Whirlpool dialect. When she tries to imagine the ocean, all she sees are Minato’s eyes. 

Minato seems to notice the change in the mood, perceptive as usual.

“Should we go?” he asks, unobtrusive and polite as possible considering the circumstances. Kushina would be angry at his treatment of her if she wasn’t so conflicted. She wonders if he thinks she’s broken, still shattered from the loss of her people and home—if that’s why he’s suddenly walking on eggshells around her.

How can she tell him that this relationship between them, the best thing that’s ever happened to her, is the problem?

She nods and drops a few bills onto the countertop before heading out the front exit of the restaurant.

Kushina walks single mindedly back out the front gates of the town, out towards the dark forest. She needs no lamplight to see, not with the stars in the sky and her sharp memory to guide her. 

You see, Kushina has scoped out their destination multiple times today. Those who know her know that Kushina is more of an improviser than a planner, impulsive and instinctual in a way people like Minato often are not. But even she plans. 

Planning is important when you’re going to break up with the love of your life.

She doesn’t pause to see if Minato is following her. She knows he is, just like she knows he’s got an unshakable core of integrity and dignity most men will never achieve in their entire life. It only strengthens her resolve.

After minutes of walking, she comes to a stop in a clear meadow.

She takes a seat on the mossy forest floor, motioning for Minato to join her.

He does so wordlessly, without a single complaint despite the damp surface, dewdrops already seeping through his clean, well-pressed clothes.

“We need to break up,” she announces abruptly.

 _Fuck_ , Kushina thinks. _That’s not what I practiced at all._

Minato’s eyes, almost black in the night, widen.

“What? Why?” he bites back, tone strangely demanding in a way it's never been before. Kushina thinks that this is the Minato the Hokage and the Konoha Shinobi see. Someone kind, but unshakable. A true authority figure. A leader, worthy of respect.

“This relationship is unsustainable.”

There, all out in the open.

It’s stupid to think that reasoning could ever be enough, not when it’s Minato who she’s breaking up with.

“Is this about the long-distance thing? Kushina, we’ve done it before, and we’ve done it well. I don’t care if I don’t see you for months on end, as long as you’re still out there. We can make this work. I’ll send more letters, I’ll make time to visit, just like this—”

“The long distance isn’t the problem, Minato,” Kushina replies, cutting him off. “It’s that it will never stop. I can’t ever return to Konoha. I can’t go back to the life of a Shinobi, back to emotionless killing that drives this never-ending war complex forward.”

“No one is asking you for that!”

“I can’t be your pretty little wife, first lady to Hokage,” she continues. “I don't want that cute house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. I don’t want kids with your eyes and my hair, and Tsunade and Jiraiya as their shitty godparents. I don’t want Sunday dinners with Kakashi and Obito. I don't want a wedding on a summer afternoon, where the blue sky matches your eyes, because it reminds me of Uzushio and the ocean, something I’ll never get back. I don’t want our life together to be some shitty replacement for what I’ve lost. I don’t want to spend whatever life I have left living in paranoia, scared I’ll lose it all over again.”

She gasps for breath, surprised at the weight of what she’s said. She feels wetness on her cheeks, realizes she’s crying now and has been for a little while.

Kushina doesn’t know how Minato reacts, deliberately avoiding eye contact with him. It’ll make this less painful for both of them.

“I don’t want those things either,” Minato says after a moment, his voice still steady and soft. “God, I would never expect you to settle down like that, to try to replace Uzushio with us. I don’t need kids or a house with a big backyard. I don’t need that summer wedding and I certainly don’t need a first lady to go to bullshit ribbon-cutting ceremonies and charity events.”

He reaches out for her hand. She reluctantly turns to face him.

“I don’t even need you in Konoha. I don’t expect you to be the same, to act like this war and its atrocities never happened.”

“This, right here, is enough.”

Kushina freezes at the sincerity and conviction of his voice. How can she possibly convince him when he insists on saying things like that?

“It’s not fair to you,” she blubbers through wet eyes. Her nose is running at this point, her face probably an unattractive shade of red, squished and contorted like an ugly baby that hasn’t been fed. She supposes it doesn’t matter in the pitch black of night, and certainly not when the man before her has seen every ugly side of her before.

“I think I can decide what’s fair for me,” Minato says, something like humor in his voice.

He sighs, clearly looking for the right words to say.

“This...existence is supposed to be your penance, right?” 

Kushina nods. She’s never heard Tsunade put it that way, never thought of it that way, but it’s true.

“Well,” he adds, “I’m not going to tell you the destruction of Uzushio wasn’t your fault, because my words won’t convince you if you don’t believe it yourself. But I don’t think our relationship has anything to do with it. So if I don’t mind the current set-up, and you don’t really want to break up, then why even consider it?”

Kushina finds herself smiling despite the tears rolling down her face. Leave it to Minato to make such a complex problem so simple. 

“This is the second time I’ve dumped you for your own good,” she observes.

“Yeah,” Minato replies. “And I was an idiot for letting you do it the first time.”

And that’s that.

Kushina stretches out onto the grass, her whole body exhausted from emotional duress.

Minato lays down beside her, weaving his fingers into hers without question.

They stare at the stars together in silence for a while, until a thought pops into Kushina’s head.

“I don’t expect you to stay loyal,” she says, tilting her head towards Minato. “If any Konoha women catch your eye, if you eventually decide you’re done with this thing between us, I understand perfectly.”

Minato tilts his face back at her.

“Kushina,” he says softly, “please shut the fuck up. You know as well as I do that there is no woman who compares to you.”

Kushina pulls her hand away from Minato, throwing it over her face in embarrassment.

Minato ignores the display, continuing onwards with his confession.

“You are utterly unique in this world, and the implication that I would be interested in any random pretty face is insulting to me!”

He rolls over, gently pulling her hands from her face and replacing them with his own. Up close like this, Kushina can’t take her eyes off of him.

“What other woman in Konoha is my best friend? What other woman is so spirited, so fiercely intelligent and passionate, who manages to both challenge and support me in everything I do?”

“I can think of a few,” Kushina replies, a teasing smile on her face. 

Minato scoffs at the comment.

“No matter how much research and experimentation I do, you’re still better at seals than me. It’s infuriating! It was your stupid jokes and pranks that managed to pry Kakashi out of his shell. You worked a miracle when you managed to bring Tsunade back to the village.”

Kushina hums in agreement. “For someone who used to get into so many fights as a child, I am rather diplomatic, aren’t I?”

“Absolutely! And that speaks nothing of your beauty, which transcends even your battle prowess. The Konoha elders used to whisper about you when you weren’t listening. They say you look just like Mito-sama, with your vibrant red hair and deep gray eyes. Your round face and sharp cheeks, and big eyes.”

By now, they’re so close that Minato’s face blots out the entire night sky and forest. Even in the darkness, she can see the gold in his hair.

“And your lips,” he continues, pressing his own to Kushina’s.

“And the elegant stretch of your neck, the tanned and sun warmed skin that persists even after months in dreary Konoha.”

A kiss on the column of her throat.

“And your body, small but strong, shaped by years of hard work and determination.”

Familiar hands roving down her torso.

“And your hands, nimble and deft from years of handling metal senbon and ink quills.”

A kiss to each finger on her left hand.

Minato looks up from his perching place down her arm.

“Should I continue?” He asks, like there’s anything left to say, like if given the chance, he would publish volumes on exactly why he loves Kushina.

“Please don’t,” she says instead. Kushina doesn’t need words right now.

Minato nods, happily settling back down next to Kushina, their bodies pressed closer together than before.

 _Perhaps three more words will do_ , Kushina thinks.

“I love you,” she confesses.

And they lay there happily for the rest of the night, alone and together in some distant forest. A distant dream from the Chunin Exams so long ago, finally fulfilled.

 

\----

 

As Minato sets off the next day, back to Konoha and the real world, Kushina smiles at his retreating back.

“The sex must’ve been fantastic,” Tsunade comments, the faint scent of alcohol still on her breath.

A smack resounds through the forest so loud that all nearby birds are started from their trees.

 _Good thing Tsunade has a regeneration seal_ , Kushina thinks with vindictive glee.

 

\----

 

At age 23, Minato is going to be the youngest Hokage in the history of Konoha.

Kushina knows this, both from Mito-sama’s old history lessons and from the letter sitting in front of her.

There are three invitations to his inauguration ceremony for her, Tsunade, and Shizune. There’s also a personal note in Minato’s familiar scrawl with additional details and anecdotes.

“Are you going to go?” Tsunade asks, gesturing towards the embossed invitations.

“I’m not sure,” Kushina replies.

She wants to be there for Minato, to play the supportive girlfriend and personal cheerleader. She’s so immensely proud of him, of all he’s worked for to get to this point. She knows he’ll be amazing at it, like he is with everything he touches—that those promises they made as children to end war might actually happen with Minato leading Konoha.

But she’s also jealous and hurt. 

Because Kushina will never be named Yondaime Uzukage of Uzushio. 

Tsunade interrupts this train of thought with an awkward cough.

“I don’t think I’ll be going either,” she admits.

It makes sense that Tsunade wouldn’t go. Once upon a time, her own teacher became Hokage. It was speculated for years and years that one of his students, the three mighty Sanin would succeed him, not that it will ever come to pass.

Not with Jiraiya, gallivanting around the country writing adventure porn and sleeping with every attractive civilian maiden he sees. Not with Orochimaru, who, according to rumors, has been banished from Fire Country for unspoken reasons. Both men were always creepy anyways, so good riddance to those two.

Certainly not with Tsunade, who’s possibly more broken than even Kushina.

“I’ve been to one Hokage inauguration already,” Tsunade proclaims with false bravado. “It wasn’t anything special. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!”

And that’s the end of the conversation.

So, when the ceremony date rolls around three months later, Tsunade and Kushina and Shizune are out in some no-name bar in Mist Country, pretending like they don’t all share a common home thousands of miles away from this nobody town. 

Kushina gambles with Tsunade that night, actually having fun with it. Tsunade doesn’t get as sloppy drunk as usual and plays better as a result. When she throws her cards down for the night, hitting the jackpot, she pulls Kushina under her strong arms, her booming laughter sounding throughout the small hall.

Kushina can’t help but join in, cherishing this one familial bond she has left.

 

\----

 

As unpredictable as their travel schedule is, two things can be counted on.

The first is Tsunade’s medical duties. 

She returns to Konoha for a few days every three months like clockwork, to check on her only patient.

Kushina doesn’t accompany her on any of these visits, instead choosing to spend the nights in some small town thirty miles outside of the village that she still can’t remember the name of.

Tsunade never mentions how Obito is doing or what he’s like. In fact, she doesn’t say anything about anyone, except the occasional snarky “ _your boyfriend says hello_.”

And Kushina never asks. She doesn’t wonder if Kakashi and Obito have shot up in height the way teen boys often do, if they’ve made Chunin or Jounin, if they still go out to dinner with Minato after a long day of training. 

If they even still train with Minato.

If they visit the Memorial Stone, to gaze upon Rin’s carved name.

Until one day, Tsunade comes back without her emerald-green necklace. The same necklace Senju Hashirama once wore, that Tsunade gifted first to her brother, and then to her fiancée.

She once confessed that she believed it to be cursed.

A treasured family heirloom and certain death for anyone who owned it besides Tsunade.

But now? Tsunade’s neckline is shockingly barren.

“Where is it?” Kushina asks, apropos of nothing.

Tsunade doesn’t blink twice at the out-of-nowhere question.

“I gave it to Obito,” she admits. “I lost a bet and he won, and he deserved it more than I do.”

There’s more to the story than that, Kushina’s sure. Tsunade would never give away something so precious and painful, not without good reason. But if anyone could convince her to change her mind, of course it would be Obito. 

Kushina doesn’t press further, not sure whether it’s for her own sake or for Tsunade’s. Already, there’s a dangerous feeling of homesickness growing in her gut.

The second thing that can be counted is Minato’s visits.

He appears almost like clockwork, the complete inverse of Tsunade, because he leaves the village for a day or two at a time every few months.

He’ll meet Kushina in some dive bar in the middle of Fire Country, at some cute and local farmstand in the countryside, sometimes even just in a dense and empty forest that only the two of them can navigate comfortably.

He doesn’t stay long, the duties of being Hokage and the loyalty of his people always calling him back to Konoha, but Kushina doesn’t care. She will never ask him to stay longer, just as he will never ask her to come back with him.

For both of them, these little rendezvous are enough.

In these brief moments shared between so totally disparate lives, they reconnect and familiarize themselves with each other. They share stories of recent travels and reminisce about the past. With Minato, every small detail, every funny coincidence, every pet peeve, is important.

The same goes for him. She can see that he holds himself differently nowadays, with more authority and rigidity in his shoulders. Sometimes there are bags under his eyes and frown lines around his mouth and forehead, tarnishing his handsome and boyish features. He doesn’t talk much about what he does as Hokage.

Instead, Kushina lets him focus on himself as a person, and by the end of each of these little visits, he comes away looking more well-rested and healthy than he did when he arrived.

Being with him gives Kushina the extra push needed to get out of bed every day. For every time she remembers the faces of all those dead cousins and aunts and uncles and friends and strangers, she thinks of Minato and his dream of a better world, where people won’t have to suffer like she did.

If she lives long enough, if she keeps on carrying forward, maybe she’ll see that day come to fruition.

Of course, they reconnect in more physical ways too.

Inevitably, each time they are together, Minato and Kushina fall into to bed together. 

It’s born out of habit and need, the sex pendulating between gentle and soft or rough and vicious, depending on the encounter.

The physical intimacy is satisfying on a base level, deep enough that even the Nine-Tails simmers down after a night with Minato.

Rather than consider the implications too deeply, Kushina takes this revelation as the gift it is, grateful not to hear that demonic voice in the back of her head and stirring at the bottom of her stomach.

She even helps Minato sometimes, giving him advice on new jutsu and various seals or offering the kind of diplomatic advice only an unbiased outsider can give.

She tries not to imagine how it would be if she lived in Konoha, if every moment could be as simple as these stolen trysts.

Inevitably, duty calls and Minato answers, promising to meet with Kushina again another day. 

_Glad to see him come, hate to see him leave_ , Kushina always thinks as she watches the disappearing flicker of Minato’s golden hair under the sunlight.

 _Actually_ , she amends with a lecherous gaze at his ass, _maybe I don’t mind seeing him leave either_.

 

\----

 

On Kushina’s 25th birthday, which she and Tsunade and Shizune are celebrating at some hole-in the-wall restaurant in Wind Country, she spots a familiar shade of red through the window, outside in the busy marketplace.

Without any explanation she dashes outdoors, following the head of hair like an emergency beacon.

She pushes past people, using her enhanced strength to do so, but there’s just too many people in the crowd for her to see past.

The head of hair disappears into the chaos, and Kushina stills, hope dashed. The chances of it being an Uzumaki were impossibly slim anyways.

But then, a voice rings out over the cacophony of the stalls.

“Kushina?” it exclaims, pronouncing her name with the same soft syllables and lyrical tone Kushina hasn’t heard in ages.

She whirls around towards the voice, only to come face to face with an old and familiar face.

It’s Uzumaki Atsuo, in the flesh and blood. He’s aged a lot since Kushina last saw him, his youthful features now marred by wrinkled and scarred skin, but she would recognize that nose and jawline anywhere. The silvery red of his hair confirms it. If this is a henge Jutsu, it’s impossibly good, undetectable to Kushina’s senses.

She rushes forward to hug him, tears falling from her eyes in amazement.

“I thought you were dead,” she cries out, head tucked into his neck. He smells the same as he did when she was a young child. It was Atsuo who first broke the news of her parents’ deaths, who comforted her in those hard months after. 

His grip, though not Shinobi trained, tightens around her. A sturdy hand runs through her hair.

“I thought the same of you,” he whispers in joy.

Around the marketplace, people ignore them, continuing to hustle and bustle about. Post-war reunions aren’t uncommon in these parts.

And in a way, this chance meeting is exactly that.

 

\----

 

Back inside the restaurant, her long-lost uncle now in tow, Kushina comes back to the table Tsunade and Shizune are waiting at.

They are equally as amazed to see this man before them.

He greets them kindly, settling down at the table with the weariness only a refugee can have.

Kushina has a thousand burning questions, and she hopes he can answer them.

 

\----

 

_There was no one that survived the destruction of Uzushio that day, or so everyone assumed._

_It’s true that all but one Shinobi had been called back to Uzushio by the time of the attack, but as it turned out, not all civilians were in the village the day it was destroyed._

_Six Uzumaki civilians, all traveling merchants, had set out on an eastern supply run in the nearby Mist Country. It was supposed to be a short trip, three days at most._

_So much can happen in three days._

_Imagine the heartbreak and terror those six civilians must have felt when they returned with enough rice to feed all of Uzushio, only to find that their city was no more than a pile of rubble._

_One of them, a middle-aged man by the name of Atsuo, was a Fuinjutsu scholar in the village. Even without chakra, he could tell that the kill-switch seal had been activated._

_They stayed in area for a few days, picking over the rubble for valuables and fallen kin alike._

_There was no such luck for either. The enemy raiders had taken anything of value that remained and made sure that there were no Uzushio survivors in the process._

_All there was left to do for these few remaining Uzumakis was to bury the dead._

_They gathered all the bodies and cremated them in a massive bonfire, red and hot as the trademark hair of the founding clan._

_When it was done, the six survivors had a meeting. They discussed fleeing to Konoha, their old allies, for protection. But, one of the survivors asked, where was Konoha when Uzushio was in danger?_

_No, they would not go to Fire Country to the home of the great Uzumaki Mito._

_Could they travel together? Found another village by the sea, where the Uzumaki spiral could once again prosper?_

_No, answered another survivor. Their brilliant red hair was too noticeable, all of them traveling together would paint a huge target on their backs._

_Finally, they settled on a plan to disband, each traveling to a different corner of the Earth where they would not be hunted as the last survivors of a great and powerful clan._

_Atsuo, the Fuinjutsu expert among them, was given the responsibility of reuniting them someday in the distant future, when the war had subsided and Uzushio was forgotten by all but them._

_Atsuo agreed._

_It was him who stayed in Uzushio’s ruins the longest, praying and keeping watch over the pyre of bodies, until an oncoming storm had put the fire out._

_He set off towards Rock Country, searching for what, he did not know._

_In his grief—no, in all of the surviving Uzumaki’s grief—none of them had thought of a very clear issue._

_A master of sealing theory rather than practice, Atsuo had no way of tracking his family back down in the distant future._

 

\----

 

“I have a daughter now,” Atsuo mentions once his story is done.

He doesn’t meet Kushina’s eyes when he admits this, uncomfortable with the confession that he created a new family in the absence of the Uzumakis.

Kushina thinks of Minato and Obito and Kakashi back in Konoha, her closeness with Tsunade and Shizune after years of travel with them. Is she not guilty of the same thing—of replacing her long-lost clan with surrogates?

“I’d love to meet her,” Kushina says instead.

 

\----

 

They stay in that town for longer than usual, where Kushina meets Atsuo’s daughter Kyoko, a bright-eyed and red-haired child. It’s just the two of them out here, the mother long-gone from some water-borne plague. 

Kushina tries not to feel a pang of regret at the possibility that Tsunade could have saved the people here, had they known.

She’s learned the hard way that the past cannot be erased, and the only way out is forward.

Instead, she makes plans with Atsuo, to help him with his Uzumaki tracking seal in the future. She plays with young Kyoko, who is shy up until the moment she isn’t, becoming a hilarious little terror that Kushina joyfully chases around their simple homestead.

Eventually, it’s duty and family that calls them away. For Tsunade, it’s Obito’s upcoming checkup, and for Kushina, it’s a promised meet-up with Minato.

She parts with Atsuo and Kyoko with tears in her eyes, uttering promises over and over that she will return for them and the rest of the Uzumakis one day in the distant future.

 

\----

 

Kushina is 25 years old, and a month and a half late for her period. This on its own isn’t worrying. She’s missed it before in times of extreme stress, like during the war or after the Nine-Tails was stuffed inside of her.

No, that’s not the problem.

The problem is that she’s been throwing up every morning for the past week.

There’s only one thing to be done, but luckily for Kushina, she’s traveling with the two of the best doctors in Fire Country, maybe even the whole world.

It should be easy to ask for a simple test, if Kushina can swallow her pride.

 

\----

 

“Congratulations,” Tsunade announces in an unimpressed way, managing to confirm Kushina’s worst fears with a single word.

Kushina doesn’t react, reeling from the revelation.

 _I can’t have a kid_ , she thinks, like if she wills it hard enough, it will change reality and biology.

“What are you going to do?” Tsunade asks gently, grabbing Kushina’s hand and squeezing it. She can see how much Kushina is struggling with this information and treats her accordingly. Kushina has joked around once or twice about Tsunade’s bedside manner, but if this is how she treats her actual patients, Kushina has zero complaints.

There’s an unspoken offer between them, a medical procedure Tsunade is willing to perform if Kushina is truly desperate.

And Kushina considers it for a moment.

No.

She presses a hand to her midsection, contemplating the life now growing there. 

Her whole life, her body has been a weapon and a tool, as both a Shinobi and Jinchuuriki. Never in her life had she imagined that she would be capable of something this good. 

No, Kushina will keep the baby. She’s lost too much to throw away life so haphazardly.

“I’m keeping it,” she says, voice steady. Tsunade looks at her and nods understandingly.

If she feels Kushina’s hands shaking, she doesn’t say anything.

 

\----

 

She gets a response letter from Minato only three days after she sends her own out.

_Dear Kushina,_

_Is it wrong of me to say that I am both thrilled and terrified? The first reaction comes from my heart, and the second from my head. I’m conflicted._

_How could I not be happy about this? A child is a testament to our love, the perfect combination of you and me. It could have my eyes and your hair, be book-smart like me but a prankster like you. We could take the child out to Ichiraku on weekends, make Kakashi and Obito babysit when we’re both busy, raise it with a love and tenderness we both desired as young children. It would be like those first few months we had together in Konoha as Jounin, when it was just us and Rin, Obito, and Kakashi._

_But then I start to really think about the situation. Of course, this is all your choice, and I won’t intercede, but I don’t know if I’m ready for a child._

_You pointed it out in the last letter—you have your own business to take care of, and I’m not sure that I could raise the child either. I’m so new to being Hokage. The kinds of changes I’m trying to implement here, the pull I’m earning with the Fire Daimyo, all of it is heavily resisted by the clan heads and village elders. Taking in an illegitimate child, especially one suspected of being born outside of Konoha, would tarnish my reputation and authority. I fear how the child would be treated here in Konoha if anyone found out._

_Once again, this is all up to you, and you have months yet to decide what to do. Just know you have my unconditional love and support._

_Love,  
Minato_

Below, he’s traded out his usual drawing of a lone pineapple for three fruits and vegetables. The Minato-pineapple is still there, but beside it are an equally large habanero pepper, and something smaller between them. A squash, maybe? 

No, Kushina realizes with a start. A whimsical cross between a pineapple and a habanero.

Their child.

She runs her fingers over the doodle.

Even if the child is not wanted, it will most certainly be loved.

 

\----

 

Time passes quickly, and Kushina finds herself inching closer and closer to her due date, uncertain what to do.

Like all other new parents, there’s the issue of names. Kushina and Minato trade letters back and forth on the subject, arguing over names for boys or girls like they have control over what gender the kid is going to be.

Tsunade and Shizune weigh in the situation too, and judgingly from the Minato’s letters, Kakashi and Obito have offered up suggestions, not that Minato will admit to telling his two former students the good news.

There’s a definite desire to give the child a name of one of their dead loved ones. Fumi or Hideo after her parents, or Mito, or any of the names of old childhood schoolmates and departed family members. One of Minato’s parents perhaps, or even Rin.

Eventually, they toss the idea out. A name should be hope for the future, not a tribute to the past. 

Kushina briefly considers the name Tsunade but throws it out before she can voice it to her mentor. There is only one Tsunade in this world, and she doesn’t need a bigger ego than what she already has.

That leaves new names.

Or, as Minato puts it, infinite possibilities.

This leads Kushina to the second major issue. One that isn’t quite so common among the average parent.

She still has the Nine-Tails trapped in her body. Tsunade explained early on that the most likely time for the demon to try to escape will be during childbirth, when Kushina’s physical and mental strength is being diverted by the process of having a child.

It might also be their only chance to extract the demon from Kushina without her dying, since it will try to detach itself from her soul at this time. Otherwise, she’ll have to wait for her deathbed to transfer it.

And there are no possible vessels to contain the demon, no chakra reserves powerful enough, no souls deep enough, to contain the monster besides an Uzumaki.

Uzumakis aren’t exactly a common occurrence these days. In fact, the only viable candidate is the baby growing within Kushina right now.

So, after many hormone-induced tears and letters back and forth from Konoha, Kushina comes to the decision that she will transfer the demon’s soul into a newborn baby. Her own child.

But Kushina is smart. She may have been forced into this decision by forces beyond her control, like ancestry and fate and war, but she will give her child every advantage in this world.

Starting with the seal they’re going to use.

There are four-way correspondences between her and Tsunade, Atsuo, Minato, and even Minato’s teacher Jiraiya for how to go about creating a new seal.

The one they eventually settle on is modeled after an old seal from Uzushio, one only Atsuo remembers at first. It’s called the Eight Trigrams Seal, intended for sealing away monsters and other forces of evil into a human carrier.

The main advantage is that the host can draw chakra from whatever is sealed inside them. Kushina, who can only draw the Nine-Tails’ chakra when in immense emotional duress, and at the cost of her own health, thinks this will be the perfect advantage for her child. She isn’t foolish enough to think she can protect her child all the time, but maybe if she gives it this gift, she won’t need to.

She and Minato modify the seal further from there. They figure out how to load a bit of their own chakra into it, in order to block out the Nine-Tails’ own evil whispers and cruel emotions. 

It’s a problem that only Minato knows Kushina struggles with, but together they’re going to fix it.

She can’t even stomach the thought, of her own child growing up with the Nine-Tails’ thoughts and emotions in its head.

 

\----

 

They still travel during this time, taking on sick patients and poker nights in alternating towns. Kushina stops drinking, stops going out altogether, because it's the responsible, adult thing to do.

Instead, she starts paying more attention to the towns around her. She remembers all the stories she’s been told by civilians over the years, and actively tries to help alleviate their suffering.

Now that the war has been over for a couple years, people are getting back on their feet. And where there’s an economic boom, there’s conflict.

Kushina stumbles across a lot of the same scenes over and over again. Greedy and desperate people, fighting over whatever land, business, or personal disputes. Normally she’d dismiss these sorts of public arguments, but she knows how in backwater towns without governing forces, it turns to violence. And violence, inevitably, leads to war. It even leads to genocide, in the case Uzushio.

So, she steps in as an unbiased outsider. She remembers all of Mito-sama’s lessons from all those years ago, how to speak calmly but assertively, in a way that won’t piss off either party. How to piece together compromise first, how to create mutually beneficial agreements so the same conflict won’t rise up again a few months or years down the road.

And it works.

Kushina can’t imagine herself having the patience for this eight years ago. The Kushina from Uzushio would have gotten involved with her fists and loud voice, either bullying the opposing parties into submission or worsening the conflict.

But now, as if softened by time and impending motherhood, Kushina listens. She talks, and she listens, and it works. Kushina finds herself leaving towns with more friendly acquaintances than she started with.

Even as she wonders about her future as a parent, Kushina finds herself finding a life purpose outside of family once again.

 

\----

 

At eight months, Kushina is far less mobile than she’s used to. She would complain, except Tsunade gets annoyed when she does so, and Shizune always replies with a kind smile and a cheery reply of “one month left, Kushina-san!” like that makes time pass any faster.

It’s around this time that she receives a letter from Atsuo, detailing his progress on the Uzumaki tracking seal. 

_It’s done_ , he writes, a thousand and one emotions summed up into two words.

_Whenever you are ready, we can start._

That’s all it takes for Kushina to make up her mind.

 

\----

 

If Kushina’s parents were still alive, they’d laugh at the familiarity of the scene.

The baby comes out screaming, its high and shrill screaming nearly blocking out the pounding rain outside.

Before Shizune can hand the baby to Kushina, Tsunade bandages up her bloody wrists, cut open to create ink for the seal of the Nine-Tails.

Kushina is bone tired and dazed, going not only through childbirth but the extraction of an all-powerful malevolent demon too.

Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, the swaddled baby is passed to her.

He’s quiet and unassuming and small, and Kushina gazes at him with wonder in her eyes.

“How can a creature so small contain the Nine-Tails?” she asks.

 _How can I have created something so wonderful_ , she means.

The baby’s eyes are not open, but he has a tuft of golden hair upon his soft scalp, and Kushina loves him so immensely that she can’t even feel regret that he was born without the scarlet hair of all Uzumakis.

She would give anything for his eyes to be blue, like Minato and the ocean back home.

His name will be Naruto, as she and Minato decided a few weeks ago over written correspondence.

She knows that Minato was thinking of his own teacher’s first series of books when he suggested it, of dates with Kushina at Ichiraku Ramen back when they were young, the swirls of naruto fishcakes dotting their half-eaten bowls.

Kushina agrees, images of whirlpools flashing through her head.

And so, Uzumaki Naruto is born.

 

\----

 

After making sure Kushina and the baby are healthy, Tsunade and Shizune leave.

As decided a few weeks ago, they are returning to Konoha, this time for real.

Whatever change Tsunade’s seen in the world, whatever her travels have revealed to her, whatever Obito has convinced her of, she’s ready to come back home.

“I’m done being a coward,” she tells Kushina, and Kushina hugs her back in full support.

Even if Kushina hasn’t fully healed, she’s happy to see Tsunade has.

Her journey to the familiar town thirty miles outside of Konoha is a lonely one.

It’s her and Naruto, in all their erratic sleep scheduled glory.

But despite the chaos of traveling with a newborn, the closer they get to the little settlement, the harder Kushina finds it to let go.

She stands outside of that cozy orphanage for three hours straight, Naruto clutched closely to her chest so that his comforting baby scent drifts up to her nose. She can hear his quiet breathing from his tiny little lungs, and how even with his eyes closed, she can tell he has the exact same coloration as Minato.

Kushina has had so little room for love in this world.

But the crack of thunder above and a sudden downpouring of rain kickstarts her decision.

She sets him gently on the front stoop, gazing at his serene face.

You see, Kushina made this same decision once before.

All those years ago, back in Konoha, when she got the summons to return home and told the Sandaime Hokage to his face, _I’m staying here_.

And it was possibly the worst mistake of her life.

So, Kushina has lived out her penance over these past years, the perfect image of a mourning veteran.

But she’s been given a second chance, to reunite the surviving Uzumakis, to serve them in return for failing Uzushio.

This time, she puts her family and village first.

She rings the bell to the orphanage, flashing away before they can spot her lone figure in the lamplit doorway.

And Kushina turns her back on Naruto, for the good of the rest of the Uzumaki survivors. 

_I will return_ , she promises over and over, hours after the deed is done and the faint tinge of demonic chakra has long since faded away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are allusions to abortion in this chapter. Just to be clear, I believe that women are entitled to autonomy over their own bodies, which means I'm strongly pro-choice. 
> 
> Also? Did I basically write out that one scene from the 2007 classic, _Meet the Robinsons_? Who knows!
> 
> See you guys next week, when I finally finish this beast.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter! Took a lot longer than I wanted it to, and I'm still not satisfied with it, but that's just how life goes sometimes.

When Kushina returns to Wind Country, Atsuo and Kyoko are waiting outside for her, the windows of their farmstead boarded up. They both have large packs on their shoulders, and Kushina feels a twinge of guilt at the sight.

She isn’t worthy of this devotion. Two of the only remaining Uzumakis are willing to pack up their entire lives, simply because Kushina deems it so.

But she owes it to her family. Her abandonment of the clan was unforgivable. Giving them a reunion is the closest she can come to absolution.

 

\----

 

The seal, for the amount of time and research that went into creating it, is surprisingly easy to activate. All it takes it a drop of Kushina’s blood and a push of well-tempered chakra, and the complex symmetrical seals are giving way to a map, points glowing on it where all people with Uzumaki bloodlines are living.

The brighter the spots, the more related they are. There are six glowing spots on the map—Kushina, Atsuo, and the other refugees from Uzushio.

Next to the two brillant spots in Wind County is a slightly dimmer spot. Kyoko, who is pure blooded, but an Uzumaki.

If Kushina notices a point glowing dimly in Fire Country, just outside of Konoha, she doesn’t point it out.

 

\----

 

They find Uzumaki Himari not too far from the coasts of Whirlpool. She lives just outside of a sleepy fishing hamlet, her silvery red hair cut short, her deep brown eyes encased in wrinkles brought on from stress and loss, rather than extreme old age.

Kushina bows when she sees her.

Of all people, she has probably wronged Himari the most.

Himari was always a dark specter hanging over Kushina in her childhood, her own son going to school beside Kushina from the youngest age she can remember. Though no Shinobi herself, her husband was the Clan Head, her son next in line to inherit the title. 

As Kushina trained harder and harder, surpassing her peers and elders, she remembers the days that the woman would watch her from the shadows, Himari’s dark eyes trained on her outside of the training grounds like Kushina was a threat to her son’s future. At the time Kushina scoffed, her ambitions reaching past Clan Head to the position of Uzukage.

It’s funny how time and circumstances change everything. In Kushina’s childhood, all it took was one word from Himari to banish someone from the clan.

Now, there’s not much Himari could do to Kushina, even if she tried.

Kushina wonders why she doesn’t feel the need to enact revenge, as payback for years of cruelty and neglect. Perhaps it’s the lack of demonic thoughts running through her head. There’s no endless pit of anger in her stomach, or sharp whispers in her ears. For the first time since childhood, Kushina’s thoughts are entirely her own. Her very soul is free.

Lost in a swirl of her own thoughts, Kushina doesn’t notice Himari take a step towards her.

Then another and another, until she’s pulling Kushina into her thin arms.

They stay there wordlessly, an understanding passing between the two women.

It would have been Himari who led Atsuo and the others on that mission the day before Uzushio was invaded.

Kushina doesn’t have to ask the woman how she feels, because Kushina knows. 

They both let their clan down, and now they’re going to make up for it.

 

\----

 

As they travel to the next point on their map, Kushina watches her family.

She sees Atsuo, curious and intelligent, scribbling down in his little notebook every time they come across a new town. She wonders if he misses his old job as a scholar and academic, if he sees the old Uzushio library behind his eyelids when he sleeps at night.

She sees Himari teaching Kyoko old Uzushio traditions. The woman is a bit stern, but she’s good with the child, her years of experience as the Uzumaki Matriarch guiding her hand. 

Kyoko, too, grows before Kushina’s very eyes. She wears her red hair in little pigtails and confronts the world with the same single-minded determination all five-year-olds seem to have. Kushina is glad the girl is strong-willed. Anything less, and she wouldn’t survive in this world.

 

\----

 

Soon after, they find Hiroki, Himari’s older brother.

It’s a tearful reunion, Himari’s cold exterior cracking as she embraces her long-lost sibling.

Hiroki, from what Kushina can remember, was equally stern-faced back in Uzushio. She sees no traces of that man in front of her now.

 

\----

 

On the long road up to Cloud Country, they stop in a thousand small towns.

Kushina’s been to a few of them before on her travels with Tsunade and remembers the names and faces of some of the people along the way.

She’s too busy conversing with the locals to see how Hiroki watches her, an assessing glint in his eye.

She stays up later than the other Uzumakis, making her way to local festivals, town hall meetings, bar trivia nights, and everything in between while Atsuo puts Kyoko to bed and Himari and Hiroko reminisce. 

After stopping her third bar fight that week, Kushina gives up on going out. 

She’s frustrated and angry with the stupidity of humans in general. It feels like no matter how many local conflicts she resolves, no matter how many people’s lives she saves, the world keeps on turning to violence and cruelty.

She remembers a voice from her childhood, dreaming of a world without wars. But Minato is thousands of miles away, and these aren’t even Shinobi Kushina is dealing with.

Her sulking is interrupted by a cough from Hiroki, who eyes the doorway like he wants to speak to Kushina outside.

She obliges, following him out into the cold, respectful of her elders in a way she never was as a child.

“You’re good at this,” he comments without any prompting.

Kushina tilts her head at him, an eyebrow raised in confusion.

“This dealing with people thing,” Hiroki clarifies. “I’ve seen how you treat the locals. They recognize you and respect you. And you’re good at helping them.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,” Kushina replies. “But it seems like no matter what I do, people refuse to learn.”

“It’s thankless work,” says Hiroki, nodding in agreement. “But if we don’t do it, who else will?”

And Kushina stares back at him with wide eyes, remembering a fact she had forgotten long ago. Hiroki was an ambassador for Uzushio for many, many years. It was him who negotiated the loan of soldiers to Konoha in the Third Shinobi War, who ensured their trade routes and agreements remained intact with the local villages surrounding Uzushio. 

There were rumors that he received private tutelage from Mito-sama herself when he was young.

“Keep at this diplomacy thing,” he says. 

And that’s the end of the conversation.

When they leave the town the next day, there’s a large group of people waiting at the town gates to bid Kushina goodbye. She hugs each civilian individually, promising to return soon, and is surprised to find she means it.

 

\----

 

They find Isao on one of the highest peaks—or, Kushina does.

The trek is hard, too hard for three aging civilians and a child, so Kushina goes alone.

She’s expecting the cozy house and humble living, breathtaking views down the mountainside when it's not shrouded by fog.

What she doesn’t expect is the sprawling garden, more spectacular and colorful than the wild tropics of Whirlpool Country, more artful than even the precise manicured style of Founders’ Park in Konoha.

Isao doesn’t seem surprised to see her at his door. He hugs her and beckons her inside without a word.

She keeps on expecting him to ask questions or blame her, to laugh or to cry or to reminisce, but he doesn’t do anything of the sort. He doesn’t say anything at all.

When she finishes her tea, she notices that Isao has retrieved a bag from the other room. It’s slung over his shoulder like a travel pack.

He must have seen her heading up the mountain road, her red hair like an emergency flare. Clearly, he’s ready to go.

If he seems concerned about getting down the mountain at his age, he doesn’t show it.

Before they head back down, he snags a small picture pinned to the wooden wall of his home. Kushina only catches the portrait out of the corner of her eye, but she would recognize that face anywhere. It’s of Yusei, Kushina’s friendly but annoying Jounin Sensei. 

Isao’s only son.

 

\----

 

Isao doesn’t talk, period.

Kushina doesn’t prod, and neither do the other Uzumakis. Well, she can see Himari thinking about it, but the woman is too principled to be disrespectful to her elder. 

Isao, even without a voice, adds a gentle and calming presence to their group. He was once a florist and farmer back in Uzushio, and Kushina is not surprised to find that he navigates through dense forests and expanses of nature with the same ease as Kushina, his survival skills on par with her Shinobi training.

On their stops in towns and settlements, Kushina devotes her time to easing civilian problems. Since their little conversation back in Cloud Country, Hiroki has been following her on these missions, his calm voice and aged wisdom a reassuring presence at Kushina’s side.

There are only two people left to find, their points glowing fiercely bright in the heart of Fire Country. Gazing down at the map one evening, Atsuo notices something else.

“They have kids,” he announces with fondness in his voice.

“Itsumi and Yoko?” Himari exclaims in surprise.

“Yes, there are four dots clustered here,” Atsuo confirms, one finger on the map where sure enough, four dots glow brightly.

“They’re just kids!” Himari shrieks in disgust.

“Not really,” Hiroki replies. “They’re about five years older than Kushina, if I remember correctly. And you remember them back in the day, always going at it like cats and dogs.”

Kushina goes still at the mention of parenthood, quickly pushing down the memory of blue eyes and blonde hair and a piercing wail.

She’s got other family in Fire Country that she needs to watch over right now.

“Well,” Himari huffs out, “at least the Uzumaki bloodline isn’t going to die out with us old folks.”

Despite her harsh words, her eyes slide warmly over Kyoko’s sleeping form.

 

\---- 

 

Itsumi and Yoko are, for lack of a better word, insane.

Kushina cringes inwardly at their shared features, from their tanned skin and round faces to their brilliant red hair and similarly shriek-y voices. She knows that inbreeding is common among clans, and that the Uzumaki clan was big enough that Itsumi and Yoko haven’t shared a common ancestor in over a hundred years, but she can’t imagine what it feels like to marry someone with the same last name.

And then, their twins come running out. They’re a year older than Kyoko, two boys with that familiar Uzumaki hair. She can imagine them being cute from afar, in the way that small children often are, but up close, they are loud and whiny and constantly bickering. It reminds her a bit of Kakashi and Obito in their Genin days, if they were six years younger and ten times more annoying.

Itsumi and Yoko have barely made it through introductions before they start arguing again, some disagreement about which twin is which blown out of proportions. Kushina would be concerned for the stability of their relationship, but she can see from the mirth in both of their eyes that they’re deliberately teasing each other.

All of it is painfully familiar—the playful teasing, the carbon copy children, the domesticity despite the wilderness of Fire Country. 

In the chaos of packing, she slips away.

All she needs is a day—she’s traveled further in less time than that.

It’s nightfall by the time she gets to the border of that familiar town. So close to Konoha she can practically the great walls looming above the trees.

Before stepping inside, she opens her bag, and a stack of envelopes comes pouring out.

They’re all opened, corners of the pages curled where Kushina’s thumbed over them countless times. She wonders if Minato treats her own messages the same way.

Probably not. All of her writings are of her travels, of her family, of her painful and slow healing process.

But Minato? He doesn’t write so much about Konoha’s politics anymore.

He talks about Kakashi and Obito, and his recent forays into cooking when he has time off.

He talks about the frequent trips he takes to see their son, disguised by henge, a clone back in Konoha to act as an alibi.

Naruto turns one-year old today, and Minato can’t be there for his birthday. Kushina knew this from the letter he sent a couple weeks ago. Her return letter made promises she has to keep.

As she approaches the orphanage, she opens up her senses. Off in the distance, second floor, leftmost window, she can see a burning blaze of red.

After all these years of familiarity, it still makes her skin crawl.

Yet, she can see a pinprick of blue at the center. Untrained, unrefined, but there.

Kushina is scaling the side of the building before she can help it.

Long, delicate fingers pry open the window to the nursery where young children of varying ages sleep.

Kushina has since shut off her chakra sensors, but the pale moonlight drifting in the window offers enough light for her to pick out her son.

He’s fast asleep, his small, round face peaceful. She crosses the room and leans over his crib.

He’s so, so tiny, yet so much bigger than the last time she held him in her arms.

Kushina has the urge to scoop him up. She resists, knowing that to do so would wake him and draw attention to her presence.

Instead, she settles for watching him.

She stands there, gray eyes transfixed on Naruto’s chest, moving up and down with each breath. His angelic face, wispy golden hair swept over his forehead.

When the sky starts to grow light again, Kushina leans in towards her son. A gentle hand brushes the hair off his face, and Kushina’s lips meet Naruto’s smooth forehead. 

He doesn’t wake up, doesn’t even stir, as if Naruto subconsciously knows he’s in his mother’s presence.

Kushina is out the window as fast as she entered, her whispered “I love you” carrying itself on the night breeze. 

 

\----

 

Her son is spirited, Kushina realizes, watching him carefully from hiding spot.

At four years old, he’s different than the other kids in the orphanage. While they play with toys, he stares out the window with big and familiar blue eyes, like he's got the uncanny sense that something or someone is watching him. 

If Kushina had arrived five minutes earlier, she would have seen how the other children taunted and excluded him, his babbling protests drowned out by the screaming of all the others, until he finally resigned himself to the corner window. But she doesn’t yet know that Naruto is a pariah.

He round, clumsy fingers clutch at a beaten and faded stuffed animal frog, a gift Kushina knows is from Minato. Minato, who she hasn’t seen in years.

Life’s been too busy for the both of them, their secret rendezvous stopped in favor of lengthy letters by way of hawk. 

Managing the Uzumaki Clan is a full-time job, one Kushina has to do on top of her burgeoning job providing diplomatic and political counsel for mid-sized civilian towns.

It’s small enough right now that the Shinobi villages aren’t paying attention, and Kushina uses it to her advantage. Civilians know little of Shinobi history and culture, so Kushina paints herself and the rest of her clan as an old and prestigious Clan, with ancient powers and passed-down wisdom. It’s all one grand lie, but Kushina plays the part well. 

Her business letters are signed with inactivated Uzumaki seals, the kind that even students in the academy learn. It never fails to impress town leaders and rich businessmen alike. 

She and Hiroki purchase knock-off silk robes from vendors back in Whirlpool, filled with meaningless designs and too many colors, which clash with their hair and skin. The wives of every dignitary Kushina meets compliment her, wondering where she found such beautiful fabric. 

Kushina wears her hair half up, half down, a senbon tucked into it, and men bow to her as she walks through the streets. The fashion is impractical, but there is truth in Kushina’s portrayal of a dangerous Kunoichi.

And there is the icing on the cake—Isao’s gardening prowess. He sets up something permanent on the border of Whirlpool Country, a place to cultivate all of the plants and flowers he’s found on their travels. His garden, with mere human hands and a lifetime of experience, becomes teeming with life. At Atsuo’s suggestion, they start bringing the flowers as gifts when they visit towns.

Kushina doesn’t see much value in gifts that are destined to wilt and die, but it seems the rest of the world disagrees with her.

Isao’s little greenhouse becomes a sort of permanent settlement for them, and he always has spare hands and free labor with Kyoko and the overly-energetic twins. They’re all nearly Genin-age now, and utterly helpless.

Thinking of the other Uzumaki children draws Kushina back to her own son.

She can’t imagine him growing up as a Shinobi. A child soldier like herself, another cog in the machinery of the Daimyos’ endless wars.

If Kushina and Minato continue on this path, Naruto will avoid that future entirely. The son of a Hokage and the last surviving Shinobi of Uzushio. A Jinchuuriki by birth. None of it will matter. 

He can grow up to be a chef, or a tailor. A gardener like Isao. A traveling merchant like the other Uzumakis. He can get a little homestead here in rural Fire Country. Marry a nice girl from the town, have a couple kids and pass away in his sleep from old age, long past the point his golden hair turns gray.

Her son could have a peaceful life, if Kushina is willing to let go.

For now, she will walk away. For Naruto’s own good.

But with each visit, she finds it harder and harder to leave.

 

\----

 

She stumbles across him in the ruins of Amegakure, two nondescript travelers passing by on the same beaten path.

Any other time, and she would pass by without a word.

But there’s a flicker of chakra, too familiar to her own for it to be a coincidence. The feeling is so unique that Kushina recognizes it instantly. Against all odds, there is another surviving Uzumaki.

Her head picks up too sharply, and the man stops in his tracks.

His reflexes are too fast to be anything other than Shinobi-trained, and Kushina realizes she must tread carefully, lest there be an altercation.

Without a second thought, Kushina pulls her hood away, long, red hair falling down around her shoulders and to her back. She’s been told many times that she’s the spitting image of Uzumaki Mito in her youth, and if the man before her doesn’t recognize her as family by sight alone, then he is not of Whirlpool blood.

It seems to work, because the man’s hand stops from his pocket, where a kunai probably lays in wait. He tilts his head at her before pulling his own hood down.

He has long, shaggy hair that covers his eyes, but the color is unmistakable.

He’s young too, probably the same age as Kakashi or Obito are, not that Kushina’s ever seen them all grown up.

Kushina wonders if she knew his parents.

“We’re the same.”

He shakes his head, licks his lips before finally speaking.

“Maybe by blood, but not by life experience.”

Kushina frowns, put off by the man’s denials. She’s never had a problem with getting Uzumakis to listen to her before now.

“You haven’t heard what I’m offering. You don’t even know my name.”

“I know that I’m not who you think I am,” the man replies, voice cold and hard. “I can’t tell you what Uzushio looked like in the afternoon sunlight. I can’t speak your southern dialect, and I can’t name any of your traditional Fuinjutsu.”

Kushina feels a wave of pity for this man, so alienated from his own family’s culture and history.

“I could teach you,” she offers. It something she never would have had the patience for in her younger days, but Kushina has grown a lot.

“I’ve had enough of teachers and shallow promises. I’m not interested. Now go before I make you.”

He punctuates the words with an odd push of chakra, neither human nor demonic in nature, and despite all her skills and experience, Kushina finds herself shying away. 

It’s not worth risking her life trying to persuade some stranger. This man didn’t suffer at the hands of her neglect.

So, Kushina turns around and walks away.

As she sets of down the road, she calls out to the man behind her.

“The offer will be open if you ever want to take me up on it!”

But Kushina doesn’t know that it falls on deaf ears. 

The young Uzumaki man with the hidden eyes disappears from the road without a trace.

 

\----

 

 _I think you should see Naruto_ , Minato writes.

It’s vague and ominous in a way her old friend never is, and that is enough for Kushina to follow through.

She postpones her current meetings with a mildly prominent lord of Wind Country and makes it to the town outside of Konoha in record time.

Her henge is of some grandfatherly man, both completely ridiculous and inconspicuous in every way possible. Kushina finds that people shy away from the ugliness in humanity—poverty, age, death—and so it makes for a better disguise. 

She hobbles through the town, past some crowded marketplace, her senses narrowed on the fiery demonic chakra and pinprick of breezy blue that identifies her son.

She hasn’t seen him in months. Doing the math, she realizes he turned eight while she was away.

Kushina has never been so bold in visiting before, not during broad daylight in a mere henge. 

She follows the chakra trail down a dark alleyway, where she stops at the sound of sniffling.

Her form, as old and shriveled as it is, casts a long shadow down the dingy alley, her profile cutting into the sliver of sunlight that trickles back here.

It’s enough notice for even a civilian to spot her.

“I’m sorry, Mister,” cries a voice from behind a heap of full trash bags. “I’ll get out of here in a second, I promise. You won’t hear from me again.”

A rustling of bags, and a small figure steps out, their hands pulling at their bloody shirt.

Kushina panics at the sight of red, stepping forward suddenly and wordlessly to comfort her son.

He sees the strange figure lunging towards him and screeches, “Please sir, don’t do this!”

Naruto is already backing up, his shaky legs prepared for a quick getaway. Kushina pushes down the rush of guilt she feels at making her own son feel this way, and puts her hands up in the universal “no-harm” motion.

“I’m not here to hurt you, son,” she announces, surprised at the gravelly-ness in her own voice. “I just heard crying and came to check it out. Are you hurt?” 

Naruto blinks in shock at the response, like he’s unused to such treatment. “Oh,” he says. “I’m fine.” He flashes her a wide and gap-toothed smile to affirm his words.

Kushina quirks an eyebrow at that, unimpressed by such blatant lying.

“If that’s the case, then why are there blood stains on your shirt?”

“I...uh...I played a little rough with some of the other kids. It’s totally okay now, though.”

He sticks his skinny arms and legs out in her direction. “No scratches or anything, see?”

In this, he is not lying. Kushina wracks her brain trying to think of where the blood came from. There are two options here: either Naruto made another kid bleed, or he healed impossibly fast. 

Running an appraising eye over her son, she decides it’s the latter. From what she’s seen of Naruto, he isn’t very popular. He’s too small and odd, an easy target for the older and meaner kids, the way Kushina was when she was a child.

There’s also a hair-raising sensation in this alleyway, and Kushina instantly recognizes it as the boiling chakra of the Nine Tails. If she can get closer to Naruto, she can calm the slumbering demon.

“Not all wounds are physical,’ she offers. “Sometimes we hurt on the inside too. I can imagine you’re feeling pretty torn up right now. Scared, heart beating fast in your ears. And angry, like there’s something on fire inside of you.”

Naruto practically runs up to her at that point, his big blue eyes seeking her own out with the unabashed bravery of every young child. Up close, the three scars that run parallel on his cheeks seem deeper and darker than usual. Kushina isn’t so sure it’s an age-thing, not with how the alley seems to be growing hotter and hotter by the second. Whatever happens, she needs to calm him down before the Nine Tails wakes up.

“How did you know” he asks, tone filled with unmasked wonder.

“Personal experience,” she replies. “I can help you with it too.”

And with that, she holds out her two wrinkled hands, letting her natural chakra gather in her hands, the way Tsunade once taught her.

Naruto gazes down at her palms in amazement, before gripping her own two hands in his much smaller ones.

“All right, Mister Shinobi.”

Kushina gives him a reassuring smile and gets to work at pumping her chakra into Naruto’s seal. 

It only takes a few seconds but to Kushina, whose focus is so steely and determined, it feels like hours.

When she’s finally done, and the demon’s malevolent chakra abates, she leans back and smiles.

 _Take that, you beast_ , she thinks with glee.

“I hope you’re feeling better,” she tells Naruto in complete sincerity.

“I am!” he replies, pulling away now that the process is done. Kushina tries her best to ignore the sudden feeling of loss that comes with her now-empty hands.

No. Naruto is not hers. She gave up the right to her son when she abandoned him as a baby eight years ago. She gave up the right to Minato and their son and whatever happiness lay in Konoha when she abandoned Uzushio in their hour of need. There is penance for Kushina. There is hope for Naruto.

Getting up, Kushina starts to walk back out of the alley. At the entrance, she stops and turns back towards her son.

“Naruto, a word of advice—If they pick on you, fight back.”

With that, she leaves. 

Naruto stands still in the center of the alley, his eyes and hair drawing drastic contrast to his surroundings and clothes. He doesn’t know who the mysterious stranger is, much less why they know his own name. Only that it’s not the first time this has happened to him.

And as for Kushina, well, she thinks about the demon inside Naruto. She didn’t know it could act up like that without Naruto’s permission. She thinks back to Minato’s note, and wondered how many times he’s visited lately, using his own well-crafted chakra to power the seal and soothe his son.

It’s a problem they have to address in the near future.

 

\----

 

The letter is signed by Tsunade, surprisingly. Her messy doctor’s scrawl is only legible to Kushina, who reads the note aloud to the other Uzumakis at the table.

“Please consider this an option. If you register the clan, it will afford you more opportunities and protection with your diplomatic work.”

Sealed within the letter are official-looking documents, retrieved from the office of the Daimyo himself in Fire Country’s capital city. The forms, while mostly blank, are pretty self-explanatory. Kushina knows what they are from sight alone, the topic of being reinstated as a clan very popular among her clients. 

Clans, even non-Shinobi ones, are provided certain protections by the Daimyo, not to mention the prestige that comes with having that title. The fact that an application even exists is a direct result of the war, where many clans from other lands were forced to turn to Fire Country as refugees. 

If they sign their names away now, they’ll be acknowledging that Uzushio is gone forever. Kushina isn’t sure if she’s ready to let go, much less if the others are.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Atsuo announces, ever the radical.

“That wouldn’t be Senju Tsunade’s name at the bottom of the page influencing you, would it?” replies Hiroki, a frown pulling at his already wrinkled features.

“No, actually. It’s just common sense. I figured a politician like you would get that.”

Himari jumps in, insulted by the treatment of her own brother. 

“Fire Country abandoned us in our time of need. Why should we ally ourselves with them now?” She snaps, voice straining with barely repressed anger.

Itsumi rolls his eyes. He’s heard this argument before. They all have.

“Himari,” he responds, “You know as well as anyone that Konoha couldn’t have arrived in time. It took less than three days for the mercenaries to arrive and attack.”

“Don’t,” she says, gray eyes surprisingly watery. “Don’t make light of what happened. You may have lost everything that day, but you and Yoko didn’t bury your sons. Not like me and Isao.”

Isao nods in agreement, and neither Yoko nor Itsumi know what to say to that.

“So, we’re split down the middle,” Kushina announces after the moment passes.

Himari, Hiroki, and Isao on one side, Atsuo, Itsumi, and Yoko on the other. The three kids have long since gone to bed, but they won’t get a vote in something like this either way. They’re not the ones who have to choose whether to abandon the dream of a rebuilt Uzushio.

All six redheads turn towards Kushina. As the youngest, and the only Shinobi, she will be the final vote. 

As torn as she may feel on the surface, she knows her answer. She made it up all those years ago when she chose Minato over her ancestral home. When she first came to Konoha as a six-year-old. 

“I think we should do it.”

They all look at her, expressions a mix of excitement and hurt.

“Whirlpool Country has no capital, no consolidated power beyond the ruins of Uzushio. We’ll have to continue on with life as refugees and nomads, until we inevitably give up and scatter back around the world. There’s nothing binding us together but shared memories and a couple drops of blood. But if we register with Fire Country, we can survive.”

Unexpectedly, Hiroki is the first to agree. 

“If we have our name back, we can catch the ear of more influential politicians. Maybe even the ear of the Daimyo himself with enough time and persistence. We can make sure what happens to us never happens to anyone ever again.”

And when he puts it like that, even Himari can’t protest.

Kushina fills out the paperwork with the rest of them.

It’s fine, until they get to the space where they’re supposed to designate a clan head.

Kushina stills, her mind drawing a blank on who it could be.

Desperately, images of Mito flash through her head followed by Tsunade, but she dismisses both quickly. One is long dead and the other a member of another great clan.

There’s the sensation of someone ripping the pen from her hands, and Himari is scrawling a name into the blank box.

_Uzumaki Kushina._

Kushina looks up in surprise at the old woman before her. Himari, who carries herself with such grace and authority, the reigning expert on all things historical about the Uzumaki. Himari, whose husband was clan head, her son next in line for the position.

“Honestly, Kushina,” she says, something like fondness lighting up her stern features, “who else could it be?”

“Who reunited us after all these years?” Yoko chimes in, “Who protects us from mercenaries and bounty hunters?”

“Who uses our name and legacy for the good of others?” Atsuo adds.

Kushina looks at them all in amazement, vision blurring with unshed tears.

Her gray eyes find Himari’s own, one last protest on her lips.

Himari speaks before Kushina can.

“Maybe one day, I might have taken up the mantle. But that day has long since passed. This honor should go to the most qualified candidate.”

“And besides,” she grins, “Hiroki, Isao, and I can register as elders! All of the prestige but none of the work!”

Kushina smiles back and reaches for the paperwork once again.

They have business to finish, and a family name to preserve.

 

\----

 

In retrospect, it’s quite remarkable that Kushina stumbled across two Uzumakis by complete accident in the span of a couple years. Especially considering the fact that there probably aren’t any other surviving Uzumakis besides them.

Kushina is traveling back from Kusa, a small Shinobi village famed for their diplomacy, when she encounters the girl.

It’s a remarkably poor attempt at robbery, from the squeaky “Put your hands up!” to the failure to check if Kushina actually has anything valuable on her—which she doesn’t.

The girl has familiar red hair, all choppy from where she must have cut it herself, and cracked glasses. 

She can’t be more than eleven years old, her small frame gulfed by the dirty, worn clothes she’s wearing. Her frown and pinched eyes are indicative enough of her life.

Still, she tried to rob Kushina. Kushina is ready to teach the little punk a lesson when the child does something completely unexpected.

She summons chakra chains, which Kushina instinctually evades. She’ll have to thank Minato for teaching her the trick in her next letter.

Kushina stares at the girl dumbfounded, and the girl stares back in equal disbelief.

The child has Uzumaki blood, yes, but she also has Shinobi training.

“You’re an Uzumaki,” Kushina points out.

The kid snaps out of her surprise quickly, rolling her eyes in annoyance. 

“No shit.”

Kushina flashes through a couple of hand signals, and a translucent purple chain snaps around the girl’s ankle.

“That’s no way to talk to family,” Kushina tuts, a teasing smile growing on her face.

And the girl stills once again, this time willing to listen to what Kushina has to say.

 

\----

 

Before they set off, Karin looks Kushina dead in the eye, the pinched expression returning to her young features.

“I’m not looking for a new mother,” she says seriously.

Kushina agrees with the terms readily.

She’s not looking for a child. Not when she has one by birth. Not when she can’t take care of her own son.

 

\----

 

Having Karin around is hard, not that Kushina would ever tell her that.

The girl has no one close to her age, now that Kyoko and the boys are teenagers, pursuing the family trades of seal-making theory, gardening, and trading.

She’s also a Genin-level Shinobi, with no Jounin sensei around to teach her.

So, Kushina finds herself devoting less time to consultant work, and more time to training Karin. She wonders what Minato would say if he could see her now, being so patient with this young and bratty child.

At least Karin will never be as bad as Kakashi.

No, the training isn’t the problem. Karin’s company, as prickly as it is at first, actually becomes kind of fun to be around.

No, it’s what Karin reminds her of.

After all these years of traveling with her surviving family, Kushina’s guilt has finally abated. She can forgive herself for abandoning Uzushio, the way Minato once told her she would feel. 

But another type of guilt has replaced it. It manifests itself when Kushina gazes at the sky and the ocean, whenever she receives a letter from Minato by hawk, whenever she sees her face in the mirror and knows there’s a boy out there with her eyes and lips and nose.

Naruto is an outcast, despite his best efforts otherwise. Kushina can see this from even her infrequent visits, from the way he walks down the streets with shoulders too slumped for a child so young. From the whispers of the villagers, who call him son of Shinobi and spit on him for it, still reeling over losses from the past two wars.

She thought she could give him a normal life, but instead she has condemned him to a life of loneliness, his only company the specters of his cowardly parents. And the whispers of the demon bound to his very soul from birth.

Mito once told Kushina she wasn't a monster. No one has told Naruto the same thing. 

Naruto, who is named after Jiraiya-sama’s books and the ramen topping and the whirlpools back home.

Kushina thinks of Tsunade, who held Naruto when he was first born, before returning home to Konoha after years of running away.

Kushina needs to follow in the Kunoichi’s footsteps and stop running.

That night, she drafts a letter to Minato, detailing her plan.

 

\----

 

She receives a note back in record time, it’s message clear and simple.

 _Thank you_.

Below is a familiar drawing. A pineapple, a habanero, and the silly cross between them.

Seeing the picture strengthens Kushina’s resolve in a way she hadn’t thought possible.

 

\----

 

She arrives in town in the early afternoon, dressed without a disguise for the first time in ten years. Even without her waist-length red hair and stunning features, the villagers would notice Kushina. She may not be dressed in uniform, but these civilians can recognize a Shinobi from a mile away. 

They bow their heads to her as she passes by, but Kushina knows that the moment her back is turned, they’ll be glaring at her. 

She’d seen hints of it when she visited Naruto in previous years, has experienced it herself as a child.

But for Kushina, it was always because of the Nine Tails. The people here do not know that Naruto is a Jinchuuriki. Only that he is the son of Shinobi, and that is enough for them to despise him.

The orphanage is empty today, all of the children free to roam about the small town on this quiet Sunday. She sees the group of children playing in the street a block away, but that brilliant head of golden hair is nowhere to be seen. It’s not too unusual, not when he’s always been an outcast among the other kids. What concerns Kushina is that she can’t sense Naruto’s chakra signature anywhere nearby.

She stops by a small vendor cart, the old man somewhat familiar looking from Kushina’s infrequent visits.

“Excuse me, sir, have you seen a boy run past here? He’s about ten years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, scars on his cheeks?”

The man looks up, recognition clear in his eyes.

“You mean Naruto? I swear, if that little punk has done anything to you...”

“No,” Kushina interrupts, her body language growing defensive at the man's words. Her distaste for this town is growing by the minute. “It’s nothing bad. I just can’t seem to find the boy.”

She flashes him a kind and reassuring smile, hoping he’ll be more willing to answer her question.

“Well, Ma'am, I can’t imagine why you’d try to look for that street rat, but if you insist. He and two of the older boys headed out the back road to the forest. Whatever trouble they’re getting up to, at least they’re not doing it here in town.”

Kushina forces out a thank you to the rude old man before hurrying out the road he pointed to.

The pit of dread in her stomach is growing by the minute.

As she gets further and further down the road, she realizes it’s not just a feeling of paranoia and overprotectiveness gathering in her gut. 

The hair on her arms is standing up, and her fingers are twitching for the senbon she has hidden in her pocket.

She opens up her senses again and is floored by the amount of red in her vision. The Nine Tails’ chakra is thick in the air, swirling around and nearly choking Kushina with its acrid scent.

There shouldn’t be this much of it, not unless Naruto’s seal is failing.

Kushina picks up her pace, running into the cloud of demonic energy, and following the nearly imperceptible speck of blue at the center.

She bursts through the underbrush to a clearing and shuts off her senses in order to take in the scene.

The two boys the old man mentioned are cowering against a nearby tree, the smell of sweat and piss wafting faintly off of them.

Their eyes are transfixed on a point behind Kushina, glazed over with absolute terror.

She turns around slowly, and her gray eyes fix on a creature that is not her son.

Naruto’s blue eyes have given way to blood-red sclera, his irises narrowed into black slits. His mouth is contorted into a glower, teeth inside pointed like a shark. The scars on his face have deepened into wells, to the point that the lines have opened up, causing blood to trickle down his face.

His small, delicate hands have grown sharp and long fingered in an uncanny copy of claws. His body is hunched over, heaving and arched and utterly inhuman.

His tanned skin and golden hair are obscured by a thin layer of red chakra, all too familiar to Kushina.

He lunges for her a split second later, but Kushina is ready for it.

Her chakra chains snaps forward just as Naruto’s claws reach for her throat, and he’s being tugged back, a bit too violently onto the forest floor.

While Naruto is bound tight, screaming and thrashing against his chains, Kushina turns toward the two older boys.

“Leave!” She barks out, unimpressed with their cowardice and whatever they must have done to make Naruto snap. “And don’t you tell a living soul what you saw here today!”

They scamper off quickly, but Kushina doesn’t devote more than a second to their retreating backs.

She’s focused on her son. His screams are a cross between the crying of a child and an inhuman roar. His back arches to and fro, bending further than should be possible for a human. Even his mouth seems too wide, like there’s more teeth in there than usual. 

It should be abhorrent. Enough to make any ordinary person flee the scene.

But Kushina is no ordinary person.

She is intimately familiar with the Nine Tails. She’s spent the better part of her life with that voice whispering in her ears, tuning out her senses until all she sees is red. It was the Nine Tails’ chakra that would heal her wounds after a battle, all while its blood red chakra burned her skin.

So no, she does not lean away from the monstrous creature in front of her.

But there is more than that.

This is Kushina’s son.

She held him in her arms as a newborn. She’s seen him fast asleep at one year old, and curious and inquisitive about the world at ages two, three, and four.

She’s seen him cope with loneliness and cruelty from other children. From grown adults.

She wonders if his eyes are the exact same shade of blue as Minato’s, or if his hair is as coarse and thick as hers despite its different color. She wonders if he’s playful and confident around friends—or maybe shy and smart, or some unknown combination of the two. She’s missed so much over the years.

She doesn’t know how it feels to hold him in her arms at age ten. By the end of the day, she will. She will make up the years of absence. 

But first, she needs to help him overcome this.

Kushina steps in Naruto’s direction, hands splayed open like she’s approaching a wild and wounded animal.

Naruto doesn’t seem to notice.

Gathering chakra in her hands, Kushina leans in, reaching for Naruto’s exposed torso where his Jinchuuriki seal lies.

She reaches in, past the aura of demonic chakra, until her hands are resting on Naruto’s skin. The Nine Tails’ chakra bubbles around her exposed skin, burning away at the flesh.

Kushina barely notices, even as her skin blackens and blood runs down her white shirt.

All her energy and attention is turned on the boy in front of her—into repowering the seal with her chakra and calming Naruto down.

It’s a slow process, drawn out and painful for both them.

But finally, Naruto’s screaming dies down, as does the red glow around him. His eyes scrunch shut, and the scars on his cheeks fade back on.

He lies completely still in Kushina’s chains, only the occasional sob shaking his body.

Kushina could take a moment to heal her burnt arms, to calm her own emotions down, to take a break.

But she doesn’t. 

She dismisses the chains and dives for Naruto without hesitation, gathering his small form into her arms without second thought.

 

\----

 

“I’m your mother,” she tells him.

No embellishments, no explanations, only the flat-out truth and Kushina and Naruto.

He looks up at her with bright blue eyes, full of disbelief and hope and a thousand other things Kushina can’t unpack right now.

“I’m sorry,” she says, choking back tears. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

Naruto tucks his head onto her shoulder, and Kushina clutches him tighter. 

“But I’m here now. And I’m not leaving.”

 

\----

 

They don’t return to the town. Not when Naruto insists he’s ready to leave.

He doesn’t say that he doesn’t have anything worth taking, or anyone who cares enough to say goodbye, but Kushina understands the implications of his words. She doesn’t bring it up, too uncertain on how to go about handling this new bond.

They go slow, both mentally and physically exhausted from last night’s events. At this rate, it’s going to take them two weeks to get back to Whirlpool Country.

Some covetous part of Kushina is grateful for this fact. She wants these two weeks with Naruto to herself, without the added craziness of extended family and Konoha Shinobi and local politicians.

“You know,” Naruto tells her on the third day, “I always thought someone was looking out for me. The Orphanage Directors told me my parents were Shinobi who either died in service or abandoned me, but I always knew there was someone looking out for me.”

If Kushina flinches at the word “abandonment”, Naruto doesn’t see it.

“I have this memory from when I was really little. The other kids weren’t letting me play, so I went to sit by the window. And just as I was about to cry, I got this strange feeling. A warm presence, like someone was watching me. Like they cared.”

Kushina stills at that. She can’t count the number of times she peered at Naruto through the window. She’d bet that Minato did it far too often, too.

“And there were the out of town visitors,” Naruto muses, still stuck on this train of thought. “Every couple of months, I’d meet a stranger who was overly kind. One time, the man even knew my name!”

Kushina’s face grows red with embarrassment. All that ninja training, and a mere child managed to catch her. 

She might as well come clean.

“Your father and I visited you a lot, even though neither of us could afford to take you in.”

“I have a father?” Naruto screeches, his face shining with excitement.

Kushina tries not to feel disappointed at his reaction. He already knows the story of the Uzumakis and Kushina. Of course he’d be more curious about Minato than her.

“Yes,” she affirms. “But I can't tell you much about him right now. He’s in a very difficult position, and it may be awhile before you can meet him.”

“Okay,” Naruto replies patiently. 

Kushina tries not to feel guilty about abusing Naruto’s eager-to-please nature. She’s known him for a total of three days, and she can already tell he has deeply repressed abandonment issues. Knowing that it’s entirely Kushina’s fault only rubs salt in the wound.

 

\----

 

Karin, of all people, warms up to Naruto first.

Being a year older with actual Shinobi training, she slots herself in as a reluctant protector and big sister figure. 

Kushina watches them interacting sometimes. She finds herself amazed that Naruto has only been here a month.

Already, he’s wriggled his way into Karin’s charms with his cheery attitude and mischievous behavior. Karin is quick to tease him, but just as quick to encourage him. She even manages to smile at him a few times, her smiles awkward and genuine. Naruto always goes for a hug, clutching Karin tight until she swats him away, and they break apart, both keeling over from laughter.

It’s nice to see that Naruto can express himself comfortably around someone other than Kushina.

Unfortunately, the honor only extends to Karin.

The twins and Kyoko are both nice to Naruto, but they are teenagers and he is still a child. The nicest thing they did was teach him some swear words, which Kushina subsequently reamed them out for. 

She’s been making up for her absence with overprotectiveness, lately.

Naruto is friendly around Atsuo, Itsumi, Yoko, and Isao, if a bit quiet.

It’s a shyness borne of fear and distrust. Only time can fix the relationship between Naruto and her cousins.

No, the problem lies with Himari and Hiroki. 

Around them, Naruto clams up entirely, even his posture going stiff with nervousness. And when he does open his mouth, he says the worst possible things.

Kushina would pin the blame for these actions on her son, if she didn’t see how Himari and Hiroki regard him.

Thought they never say it to her face, Kushina can see how unimpressed they are with her unruly and uncouth son. It doesn’t matter that his father is Hokage and his mother is clan head. 

It doesn’t matter that Naruto is kind hearted and spirited, to the point that he makes friends in every town they've traveled to. It doesn’t matter that Naruto is driven and intelligent, to the point that he can already beat Karin in a Taijutsu match.

All they see is a bastard son, with strange blue eyes and blonde hair and a Northern accent on all of his words.

Kushina decides she’ll say something, sooner rather than later.

 

\----

 

It seems like all of Kushina’s major life changes are heralded by Tsunade—at least, that’s been the major trend lately.

The letter is far longer than any of her usual notes, and it’s not marked by Tsunade, close family friend and drinking buddy of Kushina. Rather, it’s addressed to the whole Uzumaki Clan of Fire Country, and signed by Senju Tsunade, Advisor to the Hokage.

It’s a detailed plan, dotted with legalese and infographics, but the gist is clear enough.

The Hokage, with the approval of Konoha’s Council, is offering a place for the Uzumakis.

They seem to be seeking Kushina’s political expertise, either as their own ambassador or as an independent diplomat. She’s sure they remember her fighting prowess and Fuinjutsu knowledge too.

But to get Kushina into Konoha, they’ve offered more than that.

There are business and academic opportunities for the other clan members. A place reserved on Genin teams for Karin and Naruto, if they’re interested. A carefully attached blueprint for an Uzushio Memorial, along with the signatures of Konoha’s city planners.

There’s a spot for Kushina on the council of clan heads, alongside big names like the Nara and Hyuuga.

Putting all the political machinations aside, it’s an incredible deal for the Uzumakis.

There’s no chance of it being a coincidence that Kushina received the letter on the anniversary of the day she first came to Konoha as a child. 

_It’s lovely this time of year in Konoha_ , Kushina remembers her mother saying. _No monsoon season or dreadful humidity from summer storms._

All it takes for Kushina to make her decision is a look at the blue, blue sky.

She’s coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I struggled a lot with writing this, so I'm glad to say it's done. If you've got any questions/comments/critiques, drop them below.
> 
> And for anyone who's curious: I'm already planning out the next story, once again from Sasuke's perspective. It's going to be a sequel to Strangers at the Gates :) Stay tuned in the next couple days for that!


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